Eve of War
by Redamancy
Summary: There are a lot of things in Tony Stark's life that he simply doesn't know how to explain. He's determined not to let Eve be one of them. [Set in IM3]
1. Prologue

Author's Note: Hello there! I'm Pip, and this is a fanfiction. Now, first off, I want to say that this fic was inspired by the story Can You Save Me? by colormenikki. It's an incredibly good fic, and I highly recommend the read. That said, my original character and her story, while inspired by colormenikki's story, are entirely my own. I've had this idea in my head for an awfully long time, and during that time I thought it would just be one of those fics where I planned it out in my head but never actually wrote it due to lack of time/motivation. And then, suddenly, I started writing. And writing, and writing. And this happened.

This is one of the first fics I've ever written where I was writing for the pure joy of it; I wasn't worried about chapter length or trying to appease readers. I was writing because I loved the character and the story I'd created for her. That said, I do hope that you enjoy it, and ask that if you do, you please review and let me know! The entire story is finished, but there's nothing I have written that can't be changed, so if throughout the course of the story you have any criticisms to make, I will gladly accept them! Enjoy!

* * *

 **PROLOGUE**

1976

The noise downstairs probably wouldn't have woken Tony, but he was already awake. He was sat up in bed, the pages of his favorite math book illuminated by the nightlight across the room and the flashlight in his hand. It wasn't unusual for him to hear his father coming home from work late, but there was something different this time. He could hear his mother, too, when she was usually up in bed by now. Curious, he set down his book and turned off his flashlight, slipping out from beneath the covers and pattering across his bedroom with quiet feet.

He crept from his room, careful to avoid the stairs that creaked so no one would know he was awake hours past his bedtime. The lights were off downstairs, which Tony thought was strange, since his father usually left them on for Jarvis to turn off whenever he came home late from work. He walked around a bit, curious as to where his parents were. They hadn't come upstairs, or they'd have caught him sneaking down, so they must be somewhere downstairs, he thought. The kitchen lights were off, and the study was empty, so Tony sneaked down the hallway towards his father's office.

The door was ajar, and light from inside the room was thrown out into the hallway. Curiosity piqued, Tony approached the room quietly and peered inside, straining to hear the quiet voices within.

"What's going to happen to her?" his mother asked, her voice soft and sad. He heard his father sigh.

"I'm not sure yet," Howard responded. "I was in such a rush to get her out of there, I didn't think of where to take her next, so I just brought her home. Jarvis is arranging a car right now..."

When Tony looked in the small crack the open door had left, he could see both of his parents and another stranger in the room with them. His mother was stood in her dressing gown, wringing her hands, a crease on her brow, and his father, in his disheveled work suit, was standing with his hands braced on his desk, head bowed like something was burdening him. Tony was more intrigued by the woman who was sitting in his father's chair. She was pale and looked very sick, dark circles and bags beneath her eyes, red-rimmed like she'd been crying. He could have sworn that her dark hair looked purple in the dim light of the office. He took in a sharp breath when she turned her head and met his eyes through the crack in the door. She was looking straight at him, and her eyes were silvery-blue and shifted in such a way that Tony knew she had seen him.

Shaken, Tony gulped quietly and stepped away from the door, pressing his back against the wall. There was something wrong with that woman, he knew it, but in his innocence and naïveté, he couldn't comprehend what. Suddenly feeling like his house was haunted, he scurried back upstairs again, peering over his shoulder every few steps to reassure himself that the woman from his father's office wasn't following him. When he reached his room, he shut his door and hurried over to his bed, leaping into it and pulling the covers up to his shoulders.

He laid there for several moments, every so often being sure that he could see shapes in the shadows that his nightlight cast over his walls. He was too worked up to fall asleep, and remained in the safety of his bed, wide awake. Sometime later, Tony heard noises again, only this time they were upstairs. He heard soft voices, and the shower in the bathroom across the hall began to run. He was usually the only one who ever used that shower. Curious again, Tony ran across his room and opened his door quietly, opening it just enough for him to peer out with one eye.

The door to the bathroom across the hall was closed, but it opened several moments later, with his mother leading out the woman from his father's office, this time clad in towels instead of the hospital gown she'd been wearing earlier. His mother spoke softly to the woman as she led her down the hall, but it was too soft for Tony to hear. They entered one of the many spare rooms down the hall and closed the door behind them.

He opened his door a little wider, looking both ways down the hall. He hadn't heard his father come up the stairs, and the light to his parents' bedroom down the hall was off. Frowning, Tony was just about to step back into his room and shut his door when the door down the hall opened. He took in a sharp breath, but stood rooted to his spot. Maria Stark closed the guest room door softly, turning to walk back down the hall towards her bedroom. After a few steps, she looked up, gasping when she noticed her young son standing in the doorway of his room. Casting a nervous glance to the guest bedroom behind her, she gave Tony a small smile and walked towards him.

"Tony?" she asked softly. Tony opened his door wider, stepping out into the hall. Maria lowered herself to her knees before him. "What's the matter, baby? Why aren't you in bed?"

"I had a bad dream," Tony replied, feeling like he was telling the truth. Maria frowned, reaching out to smooth a hand over her son's cheek.

"How about you come sleep with me in my bed tonight? No bad dreams will get you there."

She scooped Tony into her arms, carrying him down the hallway towards her bedroom. Tony peeked over his mother's shoulder, staring up the hallway at the guest bedroom door, feeling as though any moment, it would open and the strange, unsettling woman would emerge. But it never did.

Nestled in the safety and warmth of his parents' bed, Tony was lulled to sleep by his mother, singing softly to him and rubbing circles on his back. He drifted off to sleep, to dreams of silver-blue eyes staring at him and guest bedroom doors just about to open. When he woke the next morning, the house was quiet. His mother was gone, downstairs eating breakfast, and so Tony took his chance to look in the guest bedroom. He crept down the hallway, careful not to step on the creaky floorboards and alert Jarvis or his mother that he was awake, and pushed open the door that he had seen his mother and the strange woman enter the night before. But when he looked inside, the room was empty and completely undisturbed.

Deeply unsettled, Tony hurried downstairs for breakfast. And he thought about what he'd seen the night before for the rest of the day, and he never forgot it for the rest of his life.

* * *

 **A/N:** So, um, there's the prologue. If enough people's interest is piqued then I'll post chapter 1 fairly quickly. So, please review! Let me know what you thought. Honestly, if you didn't like it, fine. I'd appreciate knowing why. Anyways, I hope everyone enjoyed!


	2. Chapter 1: 8669

**Author's Note:** So, not a lot of response to the prologue. Not any response at all, actually. But it was only a prologue, so here's some actual content for you to read. If...anyone is reading it, that is. Um, I don't really mind having this story to myself, because that was kind of why I wrote it in the first place, but I would very much appreciate feedback of any kind. So if you read this chapter, I'd very much appreciate if you dropped a little review for me to see. Thank you very much for reading, and enjoy!

* * *

1

2013

The hours ticked by, and Tony still hadn't slept. He'd pulled all-nighters before, but now it had been _days_. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the wormhole. He saw the nuke drifting away from him towards the Chitauri base. He felt the weightlessness of space, the emptiness of the black that surrounded him. He didn't sleep because he _couldn't_ ; not sleeping gave him a lot of time to think.

Tony couldn't think clearly unless he was doing something with his hands. At least, not when he was running at 36 hours with no sleep. He tinkered with his suits, fiddled with Dum-E and U. Gave JARVIS upgrades that he didn't need. Created more Iron Man suits than he meant to. And he thought. The whole point of staying awake and working was to keep his mind away from the things that were haunting him, and for the most part, it worked. Most of the time, he was too busy focusing on his projects to pay any mind to the invasive thoughts that lurked in the back of his mind. But sometimes, work was the gateway for them to come in. Sometimes, his hands began to move of their own accord, and again he saw the wormhole, the tesseract, and silver-blue eyes that never left him.

The images flashing across his mind made him jolt; he sat up in his seat, realizing that he'd fallen asleep halfway through his work. He ran a hand over his eyes, burning beneath the lids, placing his elbows on his desk. He knew he was hurting himself like this, he knew he needed to sleep, but he couldn't let himself. Standing, he began to pace the workshop in search of something else to keep him occupied. He needed something that would keep his mind actively working, something that would keep him awake and would keep his monsters out of his head.

It only took three minutes of pacing for Tony to notice the box tucked away in the corner.

He'd hardly given his father's old files a second glance after creating the new element, hadn't bothered to go through everything and see what else his father had thought up during his lifetime. He dragged the chest over to his desk and started going through it all. He sorted through the things he'd already read, tossing them off to the side. Everything else, he skimmed through, and if it didn't catch his attention, he tossed it aside, too. There were several times where he found something interesting, flipped through stacks of notebooks or reading through files of formerly-classified SHIELD inventions. He placed one or two notebooks on his desk, making a mental note to himself to take a more in-depth look at some blueprints his father had drawn up.

Nothing had caught his interest for an extended period of time until he found a thick file which read **INVESTIGATION: THE GENESIS PROJECT** all across the front. What intrigued him most was the dark red **CLASSIFIED** stamp right beneath the title. Curiosity piqued, he opened the file.

At first, he thought that this would be another one of those files that looked a lot more interesting than it actually was. He skimmed down the page, picking up things like 'information leak' and 'unauthorized project,' things he'd seen in other files in the chest. He flipped through the first few pages, taking a brief glance of each page of the investigation overview. He was just about to close the file and toss it in the discard pile when he caught sight of a section titled: HOWARD STARK'S ACQUISITION OF SUBJECT 12. Frowning, he read on.

 _Shortly after the laboratory was locked down by SHIELD agents, Howard Stark was brought in to determine the nature of the illegal experimentation that was being conducted by the defectors. During his inspection of the facility, he discovered the patient labeled as Subject 12. Although much documentation was destroyed during the firefight, Stark recovered a single file regarding Subject 12. [SEE EXHIBIT F]_

 _At approximately 22:41, Subject 12 awoke and quickly became volatile and confused. Agents were able to restrain Subject 12 with minimal damage. After being subdued, Subject 12 was taken from the scene by Howard Stark. Although Stark was given instructions to escort Subject 12 to SHIELD Headquarters, he had Subject 12 brought to his home. Afterwards, SHIELD access to Subject 12 was lost._

 _Stark has informed Director Carter that Subject 12 is currently being held in a cryogenic chamber in the secure basement of a Stark Industries storage facility in southern California in order to prevent -_

Tony stopped reading. His heart was racing, brain going wild with the implications of what this meant. He could no longer focus on the passage in front of him. Instead, he flipped to the back of the file in search of Exhibit F. It was a photocopy of an original document, apparently still somewhere in his father's possessions. The document was a basic outline of someone's - Tony assumed Subject 12 - attributes; their gender, appearance, birth date. The information on the document was, regrettably, quite sparse. There was very little aside from the description and an incredibly vague overview of Subject 12's role as a test subject. Frowning, Tony turned the page to view the document that was paper clipped beneath. And his heart stopped.

Even without her silver-blue eyes, he recognized her. She looked exactly as he remembered her, pale and sickly, with dark bags beneath her closed eyes. The photo looked almost as though it had been taken of a dead person on an autopsy table, especially given the near-white shade of her skin. Tony drew in a shaking breath. She was Subject 12, and his father had hidden her away in a cryogenic chamber in a storage facility. Tony knew where she was.

Slipping all of the documents back into the file, he grabbed a random set of car keys from his desk, paying no mind to the fact that it was half past three in the morning. The way to the storage facility was an hour and a half drive into a remote area of the southern California desert. Howard Stark had created several storage facilities throughout the country, in places where it would be convenient for him to access, either while he was at home in California, working in New York, or doing SHIELD business elsewhere in the country.

Tony never had much use of the storage facilities. He never kept anything he didn't want to use, unless he genuinely thought he might want to do something with it later, in which case he stored it at home, close to him. It had been years since he'd been in this storage facility - or any of the old Stark Industries storage facilities, for that matter. It didn't occur to him until he'd gone inside that he didn't remember this facility having a basement.

It took some looking, but Tony was smart - smarter than his father, many believed. It didn't take him very long at all for him to determine the most likely place a secret entrance would be. In the end, it was a bookshelf - it always was, wasn't it? - that held a lever which, when pulled, moved the bookcase to reveal a thick metal door. Finding the door wasn't a problem, but opening it soon proved to be. To Tony's relief, the door didn't require a finger print or an eye scan. It did, however, require the correct number code on a keypad. The electronic screen indicated that the code was only four numbers long, so that ruled out several options. Standing back, thinking hard, Tony decided to start simple.

He input his mother's birthdate. Denied. With a quiet huff, Tony cocked his head. His father's birthdate was also denied, as was his own. Too simple, then. He decided to try _cryo_ \- 1796. Denied. What other four-letter words had relevance to Howard? Tony knew his father well enough to know that the odds of the number code being random were low. The answer would be in plain sight. With a reluctant hand, feeling as though he were once again young and foolish, Tony typed in a new code - 8669. Tony.

With a hiss, the door unlocked and slowly swung open. Tony stood rooted to the spot for a second, surprised that it had worked. Blinking, he began to descend the stairs, lit by flickering lights. There was yet another door at the bottom of the spiral stairway, but when Tony reached out to try the handle, he found that it wasn't locked.

It took a moment for the lights to boot up when the door opened. There was an eerie quiet in the lab that sent shivers down Tony's spine. He wandered around the lab, examining equipment, getting a feel for the place. After several minutes, he found the cryogenic chambers. There were five, all lined up in a row, metal doors with nameplates on the front. None of them said anything except one: the one metal door that had a green light behind it and was thrumming quietly. When Tony approached it, and wiped off the thin layer of dust that had settled, he found that it was labeled _Eve_.

Beside the chamber doors were several buttons: _freeze_ , _terminate_ , and _defrost_. Tony's hand hesitated briefly before he pressed the _defrost_ button. There was a sound of decompressing, the green light behind the door fading to orange. Beneath the buttons, an electric screen flickered to life and began a countdown. _03:59:54...03:59:53..._ Sighing, Tony turned back to the lab, realizing he had a lot of time until the defrosting process was finished. He wandered over to an empty table and pulled up a seat, setting the file down in front of him and opening it to the first page again. He read through three quarters of the investigation overview before his heavy eyes closed and he slumped over the table asleep.


	3. Chapter 2: Eve

**A/N: Presented, for the most part, without comment! If anyone happens to read and enjoy, please do leave a review. :)**

2

The sound of the defrosting sequence ending sounded rather like an alarm clock, and it startled Tony awake. He sat up quickly, taking a moment to regain his bearings and remember where he was. When his brain caught up, he startled, hurrying out of his seat and over to the cryogenic chambers. The small screen was flashing at _00:00:00_.

With a shaking hand, Tony reached out and grabbed the cold metal handle. When he pulled it open, he was met with the sight of a young woman - the one from his childhood, the woman he had seen all those years ago. She looked exactly as he remembered her, pale skin and dark bags beneath her eyes, limbs thin and frail. He stared at her for a moment before he realized that she was breathing, slow, shallow breaths that barely indicated that she was alive. He was just about to reach out and touch her when her eyes opened. They were bleary and blue, and she blinked several times as if trying to wake herself up. When she opened her eyes fully, they were brown and wide. She looked straight at him, and confusion crossed her face, before she looked around at her surroundings.

Grunting softly, she pushed herself away from the slanted back of the chamber to get herself vertical. She swayed for a moment, like a toddler on unsure feet, before her legs buckled beneath her. Tony shot forward to catch her, supporting her weight as she struggled to stand.

"Careful there," he said, carefully bringing her to a standing position again. "I don't think you've used those muscles for forty years."

The young woman looked around again, brow furrowing. "Where...where am I?" she asked softly, gazing around the laboratory and then back at Tony.

"You're in a basement, of a Stark Industries storage unit." He frowned. "Not sure if that means much to you."

The woman tilted her head as she looked at him. Her gaze was beginning to disconcert Tony. "You're -"

"I'm Tony Stark. I'm not sure if that means much to you, either. I'm gonna get you out of here, though," he said. When she had become steadier on her feet, he released her, letting her stand on her own. "Your nameplate said Eve on it."

A flash of recognition crossed her face. When she spoke, her voice sounded livelier. "Yes! That is what I am called. I am...Eve." She took special care to say her name correctly, and Tony noticed a certain kind of reverence in her when she said it. She looked him up and down quickly before her eyes settled on his face. She gave him a small smile. "You are Tony? Hello."

"Yeah, hi. Come on, I'm taking you home with me until I figure out what to do with you." Eve followed with small steps as Tony walked over to the lab table and began to gather up all of the documents into the file.

"I understand that forty years is an extended period of time," she stated. "What was I doing in... _there_ for so long?"

"If I knew, I'd tell you," he answered, turning back to her with the files tucked beneath his arm. It was disconcerting to see her standing before him, like she had jumped straight from the past. Not a single thing was different about her, except she was wearing a bleak grey nightgown instead of the hospital gown he remembered seeing her in, and her eyes were a warm brown instead of the calculating silver-blue that had haunted him as a child. Only now, she seemed much less intimidating than she had been when he'd first seen her as a child. Then, her gaze seemed to pierce straight through him, even from the tiny crack in the door. Now, her eyes were wide and unassuming, expression innocent and, perhaps, a little lost. When he looked at her, she no longer gave him a deeply unsettled feeling; rather, Tony was filled with unease, quite unsure what to make of the woman standing before him.

He ushered her out of the lab and up the stairs, making sure that the thick metal door and false bookshelf were back in place before leading Eve outside. She paused very suddenly when the cool desert air hit her. It took Tony a minute to realize that she wasn't following along behind him. Instead, she remained by the entrance of the door, arms wrapped around her thin body, gaze up at the sky.

"Come on," he said. "What's the matter?"

"I am not encountering a problem," she replied, focus remaining on the blue sky above. "This is the sky, is it not?"

Frowning and confused, Tony looked up, half-expecting to see something strange about the sky. But it was the same as it always was, bright early-morning blue, spotted with clouds. Something about it seemed to fascinate Eve.

"Yeah," Tony replied, frowning. "What about it?"

"I have not seen the sky when it is in this state."

"Um. Okay." He opened the passenger-side door for her. "Come on. There will be plenty of time to look at the sky...literally whenever. But we should get back."

Seeming to snap out of a daze, Eve approached the car. She inspected it for a moment before sitting down carefully. As Tony closed the door and made his way around the front of the car, Eve shifted in her seat, apparently interested in the way the leather creaked as she shifted her weight. She seemed quite delighted when the car roared to life, leaning forward to inspect the various buttons on the center console.

"What do these do?" she asked.

"Those control the radio," he replied, focusing for the moment on pulling away from the storage facility. Eve reached forward, carefully touching the buttons with the pads of her fingertips.

"Someone said that to me before."

Tony furrowed his eyebrows. "What?"

"'I'm taking you home with me until I figure out what to do with you,'" Eve repeated. "A man told me that before. When he took me away from..." She paused, frowning deeply. "From..."

Tony looked over. Eve's eyebrows were furrowed, and her eyes were glazed over in confusion. She looked like she was trying hard to remember something. After a moment, she released a frustrated huff, slumping back in her seat like she'd given up.

"My memory is incomplete." It was the first emotion other than confusion that Eve had seemed to display. Now, she sounded frustrated. For several moments, there was complete silence in the car, except for the quiet sound of the engine. Typically, Tony would think up something witty to say to break the silence, because he never did care for silence, but now he wasn't quite sure what to make of his situation. His brain was too busy trying to figure out what the hell he was going to do with Eve to come up with wry comments.

Eventually, the silence was interrupted by a low, rumbling growl. When Tony looked over, Eve had her hands resting over her stomach - the source of the noise - with an unsettled look on her face. He smirked.

"We'll stop and get a bite to eat on the way home. I'm assuming you didn't have very much to eat during the forty years you were frozen."

"I believe I will require more than a bite of food in order for my hunger to be satiated," Eve said, looking up at him with a frown. Tony looked between her and the road several times.

"Are you serious?"

Her frown deepened. "Why wouldn't I be?"

He shook his head, letting out a deep breath.

"Why wouldn't you be?" he repeated, shaking his head.

* * *

Tony walked into the house with a Burger King bag in one hand and a half-eaten hamburger in the other. Eve had downed two hamburgers and a milkshake in less than five minutes on the car ride there. She had been in awe of her surroundings from the moment they entered city limits, and though Tony had found it amusing when she'd given the tired, underpaid drive through worker an enthusiastic hello, his enjoyment of her fascination had worn off by now. That didn't impact Eve's wonderment in any way, however, as she breathlessly took in the foyer of the house.

"Tony? Is that you?" Footsteps echoed through the open room. Eve, tuned in to the sound, surmised that the echo pattern of the footsteps indicated that the person was walking down stairs. "I've been looking for you all morning. Where have you - oh. Hello."

Pepper Potts stopped in her tracks, eyes glued on the woman who stood at the edge of the foyer. Eve, in turn, was looking at Pepper very curiously. She smiled.

"Hello."

"Who's this?" Pepper asked, turning to Tony, who'd descended into the living room and had settled himself on the plush sofa with his hamburger.

"That's Eve."

Eve had lost interest in the conversation, or so it had appeared, as she turned her attention to the expensive paintings on the walls and the various decorations that littered the coffee table. Pepper walked toward Tony, lowering her voice in the hopes that Eve wouldn't hear from across the room.

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?" she asked. Tony shrugged.

"I'm kind of figuring out what to do with her," he said. Just as Pepper opened her mouth to say something, Tony stood, kissing her on the cheek before taking another bite of his hamburger. "I know I'm being vague and, probably, kind of an asshole, but it's really complicated and I promise I'll tell you all about it later. Until then - Eve!" he called.

Eve turned, following Tony as he descended the stairs to the garage. She offered Pepper a small smile and a brief wave before she disappeared down the steps. Pepper blinked, taking a moment to make sense of things, before she frowned and followed Tony and Eve down the steps. When she made her way into the garage-turned-laboratory, she found Eve wandering around, examining U and Dum-E, while Tony frowned down at one of the computer screens set up around his desk.

"Tony," she hissed. He turned, a bit surprised that she'd followed. "What is going on?"

"It's...complicated." He hesitated, before gathering up the Genesis Project file on his desk and handing it to her. "Look, Eve...I think she's...like me. Like the team."

"You mean she's got...powers, or something?"

"I don't know," Tony shrugged. "I don't really know anything about her, yet." He held the file out to her again. "It's all in this."

Pepper took the file, looking down at the SHIELD logo emblazoned on the front. "Then why not get SHIELD do deal with it? What's different?"

"My dad froze that woman in a Stark Industries storage facility for forty years because he wanted to keep SHIELD's hands off of her." He threw a look over his shoulder to Eve, entertaining herself with Dum-E. "Before I call them, I want to find out why."

Pepper pressed the file to her chest. "Got it. I take it you read through the first page and then got bored?"

"I was more interested in the actual specimen." He turned to fiddle with something on his computer screens for a moment, before returning his attention to Pepper. "Let me know if you find anything...worth note."

She nodded dutifully, making her way back upstairs. "You're _so_ lucky I have the day off today."


	4. Chapter 3: Incomplete

3

Tony looked between Eve and the computer screens that showed a vague scan of her body. The vital signs that JARVIS was reading from her were... _weird_. Mostly, everything was normal, but JARVIS was indicating on the computer that there was an unknown substance of her biology that the computer wouldn't be able to analyze without a blood sample. Tony prepared a syringe, setting everything out on a table beside a chair that he'd set up.

"Hey, Eve," he called. She turned to him, a questioning look on her face. "Could you home over here, please?"

She came over, sitting in the chair when he indicated. She seemed perfectly content to comply with his requests, until she noticed the syringe on the table and went rigid. Her breathing and heart rate sped up; this was indicated on the computer screens, catching Tony's attention. He looked over to see that she had her eyes locked on the syringe. After a moment, she looked up at him.

"What is this for?" she asked, voice shaking. Her eyes were silver-blue again, wide and full of fear.

"It's just a little test I want to do," Tony soothed, walking towards her cautiously. He didn't know if she was dangerous, but it freaked him out when her eyes went back to being silver-blue instead of warm brown. "Is that okay?"

Eve curled in on herself, looking between the medical equipment on the table and Tony.

"Will it hurt?" her voice was quiet, and the scared quiver in it kind of broke Tony's heart.

"Not a bit," he said. "Well, okay, a little bit. But only for a minute, and then it'll feel better."

Eve hesitated, before she shook her head. Letting out a deep breath, Tony sat himself on the wheeled stool next to her chair, swabbing the inside of her arm with alcohol. Just before the needle touched her skin, she turned her head away, making a pitiful sound. She flinched when the needle pierced her skin, and Tony quickly took a sample of blood. Or, what he assumed was blood. Instead of deep red, the liquid that filled the syringe was a dark purple. Frowning, Tony capped off the syringe, placing it on the table, and used medical tape to tape a cotton ball over the small bleeding pinprick on her arm.

"Okay, it's over."

Eve's eyes fluttered open, and she ran a finger over the cotton ball. "That wasn't so bad."

"See?" Tony said, wheeling his stool over to his desk. "What did I tell you?"

"You told me that it would only hurt for a minute," Eve replied, standing and following Tony over to his desk. "Though I believe that it hurt for less than a minute."

"All water under the bridge, now."

Eve frowned, eyebrows knitting together. "I...do not recall our conversation turning to bridges."

That gave Tony pause. He turned to her. "My God, are you _entirely_ literal? That was a metaphor."

"Um." Eve shifted on her feet unsurely. "I think so? I am familiar with the concept of metaphors, but I don't believe I have encountered any before now."

"Excellent," Tony breathed. He had put the blood sample into the analyzer, and was watching the computer screen closely for results.

"Sir," said JARVIS overhead. Eve jumped and searched for the source of the voice. "I still cannot identify the unknown substance of Miss Eve's biology. Shall I try running this component through a wider database?"

"Run it through everything you've got, J," Tony said, inputting data in the computer. "I want to know what the hell that is."

"What is that voice?" Eve asked.

"That's JARVIS," he explained. "He's an artificial intelligence that I created to help me with stuff."

"Oh." Eve blinked and looked up at the ceiling. "Hello, JARVIS."

"Hello, Miss Eve," JARVIS responded. Eve was quietly delighted.

"JARVIS is a computer?"

"Yup," said Tony. "Make yourself comfortable. JARVIS has got one of the largest information databases in the world, it could be a while before he figures out what's weird about your blood."

Eve was quiet, sitting back down in the seat that Tony had set up beside his desk. Her eyes followed Tony as he stood and walked over to the semi-circle of Iron Man suits on the other end of the garage. She had inspected them earlier, but hadn't yet asked Tony what they were. She had surmised that they were armor of some kind, given their humanoid shape and metal plates, and had drawn the conclusion that they were specific to Tony, based on the presence of the circle of blue light in each of their chests, which was also dimly present beneath Tony's shirt.

"What are those?" she asked. Tony didn't turn to her, only swept his eyes over the suits.

"They're iron suits. Armor that protects me," he answered.

"Does that circle in your chest protect you, too?"

He turned, observing her. She was watching him curiously. There wasn't a hint of malice about her, not in her voice, or in her face, or in the way she held herself. She was intrigued by everything; by his robots, by his suits, by him. By the world around her, which she seemed wholly unacquainted with. Tony figured that she must not have had much of a life before she was a test subject. He hoped Pepper would finish reading the file soon, so he could understand her past. Until then, he wanted to understand _her_ , sitting there across his lab waiting patiently for him to answer the numerous questions she posed to him.

Instead of responding, he walked over to where she was sitting and pulled up a stool across from her.

"Yeah," he replied. "It does."

She tilted her head. "What does it protect you from?"

"There's shrapnel trying to crawl its way into my heart. This - the arc reactor - keeps it away." He paused. "It's not literally trying to crawl."

Eve was typically quite pleased whenever Tony answered her questions; if she was not, it was because she had thought of another question to ask. So Tony had sort of gotten used to seeing the confused expression return to her face after he answered a question of hers, but he wasn't used to the face she was making now. She looked...concerned. Sad.

"Something bad happened to you."

He looked up at her, frowning. "How do you know?"

"Something bad happened to me, and I had shrapnel." She pulled down the collar of her shirt to reveal faded, silvery scars beneath her collarbone. Tony frowned deeper. What the hell kind of test subject was she if she had scars from shrapnel wounds?

"Eve," he said quietly. "What happened?"

She looked down at herself, raising a hand to run a gentle finger over the raised skin.

"There was an explosion. I think...it was during a test. I think I failed the test. The doctors who took me away weren't happy. There were bright lights, and then..." she paused, moving her hands away from her scars and fixing her collar. She shook her head. "My memory is incomplete."

Tony didn't press for more information. He placed a hand on her shoulder and stood, turning back towards his suits. There was a modification for the Mark XLII that he wanted to try. The armor still in pieces, he put on the gauntlet and powered it up. It was just about ready for him to implant the microchips in his arm, but not quite. Once he was sure all of the pieces worked separately, he would be ready to move on to the next phase.

"U, camera duty," he called. With a small mechanical whirr to indicate that it had understood Tony's command, the robot picked up the small video camera that Tony used for tests and trials. "Go wide. I want full detail. Repulsors at 100%. I think I've fixed the whole 'break apart' problem. Let's find out."

Eve watched, enraptured, as Tony conducted his tests. He had wooden targets set up across the lab, and aimed at each one in turn. She startled when he let off repulsor blasts, then quickly became enthralled. She looked down at her hands, recalling something...similar happening. She stood, excited. She had remembered something, for once, with perfect clarity.

"Great!" said Tony. "Well, there's that. Once we get the thruster boots stabilized, we're ready to move on to -"

"Tony!" Eve called excitedly. Tony turned, and stumbled in stock; Eve's eyes had changed again - not just silver-blue, but glowing. Actually glowing, as were her hands, a bright electric blue. "I can do that too!"

"You can what?"

Tony had hardly finished his question before Eve threw out her arm; a bright blue light left her hand and crossed the room like a bullet, crashing into a black toolbox. The heavy metal toolbox toppled over, a clean hole seared in the middle of the deep crater that the energy blast had left in the metal. Eve seemed amazed, but Tony was reeling.

"What the _hell_ was that?" he cried, stumbling back.

"I don't..." Eve started, blinking. She had thought that, perhaps, Tony would be happy to see that they shared an ability. Without removing the gauntlet, he began to hurry towards the stairs.

"Stay here!" he said, bounding up the steps. After a second, he reappeared down the stairs again. "And _don't_ do that again!"

* * *

 **A/N:** Thank you so much for the follows and favorites! It means so, so much!


	5. Chapter 4: Teacher

4

Tony returned a minute or so later, pulling a very confused Pepper down the stairs behind him. Eve had sat herself down in the chair beside Tony's desk again, wringing her hands. When she had made mistakes before, she was punished severely for them. She couldn't remember clearly, but her gut instinct upon Tony's reaction was that he was angry, and her gut told her that getting him angry meant that she was going to be punished. She surmised, in her time worrying, that in her past, wherever she had been, she hadn't been allowed to make mistakes.

" _Look_ at this!"

"Oh my God," Pepper gasped, placing a hand over her mouth as she surveyed the damage. Luckily, the damage to the workshop itself was minimal, but Tony would need a new toolbox to replace the one that Eve had destroyed. "Eve did this?"

"Did you find anything in the file about this?" Tony asked. He lowered his voice, but Eve could still hear him clearly. It took Pepper a moment to blink away her shock and surprise.

"The file said that...um, that she - she's Subject 12, isn't she? - that when she became volatile, she produced...energy projectiles. I didn't realize - I didn't know what that meant," she explained, stumbling over her words. Consciously, Pepper knew that Eve and the Subject 12 described in the files were the same person, but it didn't connect until then that Eve was the person who had become volatile, who was recovered from a facility owned by SHIELD agents who'd gone rogue.

Even though the evidence that Eve was dangerous was right in front of her, she still had a hard time believing it. Eve, head bowed and hands fiddling nervously, looked more like a child in trouble than she did a violent threat.

"Tony," Pepper said, shaking her head. "Tony, you need to call SHIELD."

"No, I can't -"

"The file _said_ -" she struggled to make her voice louder than Tony's as he tried to argue. "The file said that she was frozen in the storage facility in order to prevent her hurting anyone. She's, she's dangerous."

Her voice lost conviction at the end.

"Pepper, listen to me," he said, placing his hands on her arms. "SHIELD doesn't know who or what the hell she is. Now, me, I can figure it out without hurting her. But SHIELD doesn't know how to be _humane_ , they'll lock her up and run tests like she's an animal. You didn't see how scared she was when I tried to take a blood sample."

Pepper shook her head slowly, but she didn't protest. Tony took this as a good sign and continued.

"Help me," he urged. "Help me help _her_."

"Do - do I need help?" Eve asked quietly. Tony and Pepper turned to her, apparently only then realizing that she could hear their conversation.

"Yes," said Tony. "But that's okay, because I can help you. I'm _going_ to help you. Okay?"

He looked between Pepper and Eve. Taking a deep, shaking breath, Pepper nodded.

"Just...just make sure that this is the right decision, Tony. Please."

"I'm sure."

Pepper placed a hand on his arm, before turning. "I'm going to go...finish reading the file."

She turned and hurried back up the stairs. Tony let out a long breath, rubbing a hand over his eyes. He shuffled over and sat down at the seat of his desk.

"Tony?" Eve asked softly. He looked up at her. Her eyes were watery, her lip trembling. "Am I...in trouble?"

"You're not in trouble, Eve," he assured quietly. "Just...don't do _that_ again."

She shook her head quickly. "I won't! I promise I won't." When Tony didn't say anything, she shrunk back in her seat. "I'm sorry."

Tony's lips rose in a half-smile.

"Chin up, kiddo," he said, rolling over to place a hand on her shoulder. "We're going to figure out who you are."

Eve frowned. "I know who I am. I'm Eve."

Tony snorted.

"Yeah. You're Eve."

* * *

72 hours was a long time to go without sleep. Technically it hadn't been that long, since he'd fallen asleep while Eve was being defrosted, but Tony wasn't sure if he would count four hours of uncomfortable sleep slumped over a metal table. The first trial of the independent propulsion system wasn't an entire failure, but sitting on his ass in his garage at two in the morning with nothing but his helmet on, he began to realize he might need a halfway decent sleep sometime soon.

Standing, rubbing his sore butt, he pulled the helmet off.

"That'll be it for tonight, J," he called. JARVIS turned off the lights as he left. Tony slowly made his way up the stairs to the second level of the house. Eve had fallen asleep curled up in the chair in his garage around midnight, having spent all day eating and watching him work on the Mark XLII. He'd chuckled and taken her up to the guest bedroom. Pepper had gone to bed fairly early, in preparation for work the next day, so Tony made sure to be as quiet as he could getting into bed.

He saw aliens and wormholes and silver-blue eyes in his dreams.

He started awake sometime around 8. Nightmares again, but still a decent enough sleep to not have JARVIS hounding him about it. Before going downstairs, he paused in the hallway, staring down at the guest room door. He took several steps toward it and then paused. There was this terrible, unsettled feeling in his gut, like he would open the door and find that the room was empty and completely undisturbed. Swallowing, he opened the door quietly, peeking in.

Eve was curled up beneath the covers, wearing the clothes that Pepper had offered her, fast asleep. Tony let out a long breath, not sure whether or not he was relieved to find that she was still there. Closing the door, he went downstairs to have breakfast. He turned on the TV and fumbled around the refrigerator. For a few minutes, the sound of the news in the background was just...normal. And then it wasn't.

 _"Some people call me a terrorist...I consider myself a teacher. America...time for another lesson."_

Tony shook his head. This couldn't be happening. Not now. His plate was full enough already. Eve herself was a three-course meal, and then there were his nightmares and his insomnia on top of that. He physically could not handle something else thrown at him. And if Fury called him for this, he'd get a straight-up _hell no_.

He all but slammed the refrigerator door shut, mind racing. He wasn't going to be a part of this. He couldn't. There were five other people and an entire organization that could take care of this. He would focus on his suits, focus on getting over his nightmares. There wasn't a single damn thing that would make him get involved in this, even if there was a tiny voice in the back of his head that told him to fight.

It was the appearance of a red, white, and blue War Machine on the 9 o'clock news that prompted Tony to call Rhodey and invite him out to lunch.

* * *

When Eve's eyes fluttered open, she was confused. She remembered waking up on something this plush only once, and wondered briefly if she was back there again. But, no, her surroundings were completely different. They _felt_ different. There was something distinctly salty in the air here, and a very subtle metallic smell. She could hear something, a steady in-and-out that, after a moment, she identified as waves. She had never heard the sound in person before, only in recordings. The sound she was hearing now was less grainy than the recordings had been.

Sitting up, she rubbed her eyes. Her brain woke a bit more and she remembered where she was. She was with Tony. He had been kind enough to give her a bed, and Pepper had given her black cotton shorts and a white t-shirt to sleep in. Stretching, Eve swung her legs over the bed just as the windows faded from black to transparent to let the sunlight in.

"Good morning, Miss Eve," said JARVIS. Eve startled, forgetting for a moment about the omnipresent AI. "Or, should I say, good afternoon."

On the window, she could see that it was shortly past noon. She stood, stretching, and approached the door. She paused upon noticing that there was a sticky note left there.

 _Evie,_

 _Went to have lunch with an old friend. JARVIS will help you if you need anything._

 _Don't blow up the house._

 _Tony_

She considered the note for a moment, before placing it back on the door and leaving the room. She found her way downstairs with relative ease, but after that, had very little idea of what to do next. Her stomach growled, and she placed a hand over it.

"JARVIS?" she called.

"Yes, Miss Eve?" the AI answered.

"I'm hungry."

"You will find the kitchen just past the living room."

After locating the kitchen, it didn't take her long to locate everything. She rifled through the pantry and the fridge, looking for something to eat. She'd never prepared her own food before. In truth, she couldn't remember a time, before yesterday, where she'd actually eaten. She was sure that she'd eaten before - otherwise, how would she have lived? - but she couldn't remember if she'd ever learned how to make food. She couldn't remember very much at all.

Eventually, she located yogurt in the fridge, and, after some inspection, discovered that she could very easily peel off the lid to access the food. That was only the beginning of her ordeal, however. Now that she had accessed her food, she was unsure how to remove the yogurt from the cup. She dipped a finger in the yogurt, sticking it in her mouth.

"Miss Eve, you can find silverware in the drawer to your left," JARVIS advised. Turning, she opened the drawer to her left. Initially, she wasn't sure what the purpose of silverware was, but she very quickly realized that it was intended to help get food into her mouth. She smiled.

"Thank you, JARVIS."

"It's my pleasure."

* * *

 **A/N:** Thank you again for the follows and favorites! I really appreciate it. :)


	6. Chapter 5: Alone

5

Eve found that, when left on her own, she quickly became bored. The day before, she'd been entertained by watching Tony fiddle with his suits. She observed how he made upgrades, and considered the techniques he employed to advance his mechanics. Alone in the house, there was very little to entertain her. It had taken five yogurt cups to satiate her hunger, and once she was finished eating, she set off in search of something to do.

She returned to the kitchen when she didn't find any source of entertainment in the living room or dining room, deciding not to go into Tony's lab. It didn't take her very long to gain interest in the television. It was one of the few objects in the room that she could not discern the purpose of. She tilted her head.

"JARVIS?"

"Yes, Miss Eve?"

"What is this?"

"That would be the television."

"Hmm." She frowned, considering the object. "What is the purpose of the television?"

"It provides entertainment."

Intrigued, she sat in one of the barstools at the island. "Show me how it works."

"Gladly."

She watched with rapt interest as the television flicked itself on, then shuffled through the various channels it had to offer. JARVIS explained that the television offered a multitude of channels, each containing various sets of shows for the watcher's entertainment. The AI pointed out that the remote control - located on the counter in front of her - could control the channel and the volume of the television.

When JARVIS's explanation of the television was over, Eve knew exactly what she wanted to do. Offering JARVIS an excited thanks, she walked up to the wall-mounted television and began to inspect it. She realized that it was held to the wall using screws, and hurried down to Tony's workshop to gather various tools. She wasn't familiar with tools, but she knew she needed a screwdriver, and took at least ten of various sizes back up to the kitchen with her.

Eventually, she found the correct size screwdriver that she needed to take the television down from the wall. With very little effort, she lowered the television from its mount and placed it carefully on the floor, unsure how durable it was. There were a few screws in the back of the TV, keeping the back attached to the screen. After prying off the back and screwing off the metal cover, her eyes lit up. The circuit board was revealed to her.

 _This_ \- she knew this. She wasn't sure how she knew this, but the knowledge was sitting right there in her head. Just for pure entertainment, she decided to disassemble everything. Once it was completely disassembled, she would occupy herself by reassembling it.

Or, that was the plan. It was interrupted when Tony came home.

"Eve?" he called, voice echoing through the open rooms of the house. "Evie girl, where're you at?"

"I'm in the kitchen!" she replied, focused on reassembling the television. She was halfway done; it was an easy task.

"Hey Eve - what are you doing?"

"I am putting your television back together."

"What was it doing apart in the first place?"

"I took it apart."

Tony huffed. "Why?"

"I was bored."

"Bored?"

"Yes." Eve sat up, looking up at Tony innocently. "You left me with very little to entertain me. I am beginning to realize that I am highly intelligent; therefore, I require near-constant stimulus to provide my brain the entertainment it needs."

"So you took apart the tv instead of watching it?"

Eve looked down at the TV, considering that. "I thought it would be more interesting to take it apart and discover how it worked." She looked back up at him. "I realize now that perhaps I may have been better stimulated by the television programs that JARVIS showed me. Sorry."

"It's fine." Tony hesitated. "Television...rots your brain. Makes it melt - not really." He added the last part quickly when Eve's eyes widened with shock. "I can, uh, I can get you...mental stimulus. Here, come with me."

She stood, stepping over the half-reassembled television and following Tony as he led her down the stairs and into the garage. He took out some math equations he'd been meaning to do - formulas that would help him work out the mechanics for his next suit, whenever he decided to get started on it. He placed all of the information onto a small, handheld tablet, handing it to Eve.

"There you go," he said. She looked down at the tablet curiously, smiling when she noticed what was on it, recognizing the math equations. "Give that a crack. I've been procrastinating those for a while. But if you like math - which, if you don't, I guess we'll find out now - and if you're good at it - again, we'll find out - then you'd be saving be some time. I can put it towards more useful things. Drawing up blueprints, streamlining the designs, buying Pepper more presents. She deserves them. I should spend more time with her - and I can, if you finish that. It's a bit complicated, so it should keep you busy for a -"

"I'm done."

Tony turned, eyebrows furrowed.

"You're _done_?"

He walked towards her and took the tablet, skimming over the equations. He didn't take the time the work out each one and see if her results were correct, but by his bare knowledge of the equations and knowing what the results _should_ look like, he felt confident in believing that she'd done the math correctly. His eyebrows shot up.

"That's...impressive. What else can you do?"

He presented her with a small motorcycle engine he'd abandoned long ago, placing a toolbox beside her and leaving her to her own devices. He pulled out his phone, hoping that she wouldn't be freakishly fast at fixing engines, and dialed Happy.

" _Hello?_ "

"Is this Forehead of Security?"

" _Yeah, look, I've got a real job, what do you want? I'm working, I've got something going on here_."

"What, harassing the interns?"

" _Let me tell you something - you know what happened when I told people I was Iron Man's bodyguard? They would laugh in my face. I had to leave while I still had a shred of dignity! Now I got a real job, I'm watching Pepper_."

"What's going on? Fill me in."

Eve listened as Tony conducted his conversation with Happy, even from down in the wine cellar. She didn't follow their conversation, majority of what they were talking about making very little sense to her. The engine was fairly easy to figure out, but it would be time consuming, and it would keep her occupied for a good while. She heard Tony's footsteps come back up the stairs, and turned on her swiveling stool to face him when he reappeared with a bottle of wine in hand.

"Tony?" she asked.

"Yeah?"

"I had previously identified 'happy' as an emotion. I understand that the context in which you used the word was incorrect."

Tony blinked. "You heard all that?"

"Yes," she shrugged. Tony frowned.

"That's...also impressive. Hey, uh, Pepper and I...it's Saturday, it's date night, you mind if you, you know, make yourself scarce?"

"But...there is only one of me," she said. Tony sighed, exasperated. "In terms of number, I am already scarce."

"I meant..." He shook his head. "You know what? It's fine. I'll be upstairs making dinner if you need me."

Confused, Eve shrugged it off and turned her attention back to the motorcycle engine. She thought about Tony's conversation, eventually coming to the conclusion that 'Happy' must have been a person, although Eve thought that their name was rather inconvenient. She continued the work on the engine, finding the task to be puzzle-like and soothing. She remembered enjoying tasks like these, when she...

She frowned. When did she do tasks like that? It was before her time in the ice chamber, she was sure, but there was so very little that she could remember from before. Memories always seemed to come back when she wasn't trying, but once she actively tried to recall something, nothing would come. She wanted to know what had happened, why she was in the ice chamber for so long, who put her in there. Tony and Pepper seemed to view her as an abnormality, but what was it that made her different? Why did she have an ability that Tony and Pepper seemed to be afraid of?

Eve hardly noticed when Tony returned to the garage, she was so caught up in her thoughts. Her hands seemed to move automatically, like fixing the engine was second nature. She was hardly focusing on it anymore. The only thing that drew her attention away from the engine was a tap at her shoulder. She turned around to see one of Tony's Iron Man suits staring down at her.

"So," the machine asked in Tony's voice. It motioned to itself. "What do you think?"

"Um. Yes."

"It's cooler when you consider _this_." Tony's voice came from somewhere else this time. She looked around and noticed him walking up from the wine cellar with two plates of food in his hands and a headset on. Eve blinked, eyes wide.

"I was under the impression that your suit of armor had to be manually operated."

"It did, before I came up with this." He handed one plate to Dum-E and set the other on a table that was littered with various foodstuffs. "But now it can operate on its own. With my instruction, of course."

"I would like to learn how this technology works!" Eve said, intrigued. Tony smirked.

"We'll work you up to it. But, until then, remember what I said about date night and scarcity earlier?"

"Yes..." she replied, confused.

"Forget about it. Just...do me a favor?"

"Okay."

"Go...sit in your room for a couple hours. Maybe the rest of the night."

She furrowed her brow. "Why?"

"It's date night."

Eve huffed. "You keep saying that. I don't know what that means."

"It means that Pepper and I spend time together. Alone."

"Can I take the engine with me?"

Tony chewed his lip for a minute. "You know what, if it'll keep you from taking your TV off the wall and taking it apart, sure."

The Iron Man suit behind her lifted the engine, and she trailed after it as it carried the engine up two sets of stairs to the guest bedroom. Setting the engine down in the corner, Eve placed the tools she had brought up with her beside it.

"Thank you."

"No problem. And remember, if you need anything, just ask JARVIS."

The suit left, pausing to give her a small wave before closing the door. Eve rocked on her heels and surveyed the room. She had woken briefly when Tony picked her up to carry her into the room the night before, but she didn't have enough time to observe her surroundings. It was a spacious room, with a bed against one wall and a door on another. She hadn't noticed that morning that there was, indeed, a television on the wall opposite the bed; perhaps later, she would consider asking JARVIS to turn it on for her. She turned to the windows and paused.

Outside of the clear, floor-to-ceiling windows was one of the most beautiful things she'd ever seen. The sunset was casting gentle pinks and blues across the cloudy sky. She had only taken a good look at the sky twice before; the first time, it was inky black and dotted with stars. The second time, it was bright blue and clear. This view trumped them both. She took several moments to enjoy it, wrapping her arms around her body.

Suddenly, she felt very, very alone. She lowered herself to sit on the edge of the bed, looking out over the ocean at the setting sun. She wasn't alone, not really, not when Tony and Pepper were in the house with her. But Tony had asked her not to leave her room, and it was Eve's understanding that, as an artificial intelligence, JARVIS was not a real person. So, for now, Eve was alone. And she hated it. The seeping loneliness made her chest feel tight.

After a couple of minutes, she heard quiet talking in the hallway, and then a door shut. Eve turned, staring at the door, trying to determine if Tony and Pepper had gone to their bedroom. Eve listened hard; she could hear voices, muffled behind three sets of walls. Determining that Tony and Pepper were no longer in the hallway, she stood. She opened her door quietly, peering down the hall. Tony and Pepper's bedroom door was closed, a light shining from behind the door. Opening her door fully, Eve stepped out and pattered quietly down the stairs.

She wasn't sure where her file had been put. The first place she looked was down in the lab, but it wasn't on any of the various tables strewn about the garage. She didn't see it on the bookshelf, though the lights were dimmed, so she made her way back upstairs. The living room was illuminated only by the light of the fire flickering in the fireplace. Eve wandered towards the sitting area, where she spotted two half-filled glasses and some papers beside them.

The first few papers were drawings. They looked like they had been drawn by individuals with low art skills. Children, she surmised. Several different children, based on the different writing and drawing patterns of each picture. Each drawing depicted one of Tony's Iron Man suits, usually in flight. Eve surmised that Tony was well loved by children. But whose children? Children in general? And why? She stored the question away in the back of her mind to ask later. Setting those aside, she looked at the papers beneath it. The files on top were unfamiliar to Eve, so she placed them aside.

Her file was on the bottom. Picking it up tentatively, she moved over to the plush sofa and sat down, opening the file on her lap to page one.

* * *

 **A/N:** Thank you so much for the follows, faves, and the review! It means so much, thank you!


	7. Chapter 6: Doorbell

6

Eve was horrified.

She didn't know what SHIELD was, but it had saved her from something terrible. By sheer luck, they had found a stray document detailing the progress of a specimen that was a subject in a program called the Genesis Project. They launched an investigation with ended with their discovery of her in a ruined factory, one of the few things left behind when the masterminds behind the project destroyed their work and fled, apparently well aware that SHIELD was on their tail.

She shook her head, staring down at the documents. They had found so little with her. Howard Stark, whoever that was, had only recovered one document about her from the facility where she'd been kept. All it said was her birthday, her appearance, and her role as a test subject.

 _Successful compartmentalization of emotions_ , the document read. _Completes tasks quickly and efficiently. Stubborn. Questions authority. Refuses commands. Does not follow directions well. Resists attempts at emotional suppression. Ineffective compliance treatments listed on next page._

But of course, there was no next page. That was all she knew about herself. Distressed, she placed the open file on the coffee table in front of her, placing her head in her hands. There was a tightness in her chest again that made her breathe heavily. Her eyes stung. _I am experiencing sadness_ , she realized.

She sniffed, tears beginning to trail down her face. She had hoped that reading through her file would provide her with answers, but it only posed more questions. And it hurt, seeing herself referred to as Subject 12. She hated that name. She remembered, that was what she was called. But never to her face. They never addressed her as anything directly. It was almost as if, to them, she didn't have a name.

But she didn't know who _they_ were. Someone bad, someone who hurt her, but no matter how hard she tried to remember, there was nothing. _They_ were just an entity that existed in the shadows of her past, lost in the depths of her clouded memory.

She startled when the lights rose. Pepper descended the stairs, and didn't seem to notice that she was there until she reached the bottom.

"Eve," she said. "What are you doing down here?"

Eve stood, wiping the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hands.

"Something is wrong."

"What? What's wrong?" Pepper asked, coming closer. Eve shook her head.

"I meant, with you. You are upset."

"Oh - I..." Pepper didn't seem to know what to say. She shook her head and shrugged. "I'm okay. Tony and I had an argument, that's all. What's the matter? Why were you crying?"

Eve looked down at the open file on the coffee table. Pepper followed her gaze.

"Oh, honey," she said softly. She came forward to close the file, and then put an arm around Eve's thin shoulders. The girl was tiny, both in size and in stature, standing a full head shorter than Pepper. Pepper lowered them down so they were sitting together on the couch.

"I thought it would answer my questions," Eve said, hiccupping. "But I...I think those people know less than I do."

"I know," Pepper soothed, running a hand over Eve's arm. "Why don't you go up to bed? It's late. You should get some rest."

Sniffling, Eve nodded. She stood, walking towards the stairs with her arms wrapped around herself.

"Goodnight," Pepper called softly. Eve paused and turned, unused to the phrase.

"It is not a very good night at all," she replied quietly, then turned to make her way up the stairs.

She crawled into her plush bed, curling beneath the warm covers. This bed was much nicer than the hard, cold tables she remembered, lingering on the edge of her memory. She stared out at the inky ocean until her eyes fluttered closed, dreaming of the memories that would escape her once morning came.

* * *

When she woke, it was around noon again. She sat up, stretching her sleep-stiff limbs and swinging her legs over the bed. After making her way downstairs, it didn't take her long to realize that she was home alone again. This time, Tony hadn't left a note, but Eve figured she could still ask JARVIS if she needed anything. She pattered into the kitchen, grabbing several yogurt cups from the fridge and pulling a spoon from the drawer before seating herself at the island counter.

"JARVIS?"

"Yes, Miss Eve?"

"Could you turn on the television for me, please?"

"Of course." The television flickered on. "Though may I remind you that you can use the remote control to turn the television on and off."

"Thank you, JARVIS," she said, shoveling a spoonful of yogurt into her mouth. She looked up at the TV, reassembled and remounted, she assumed, by Tony. She was able to glean that the channel she was watching was detailing various events that happened in relatively close proximity to her location, though most of what the people were saying made very little sense to her. She understood that there was an explosion, at what she surmised to be a popular landmark, which had caused the death of several people. This made her frown. She did not like loss of life, she realized. It made a sharp pain run through her chest.

 _"We'll now go to Susie Hamilton at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Susie?"_

 _"Thank you, Jack,"_ said the woman on the television. She was standing in front of glass doors among a crowd of people, all of them buzzing with chatter. _"Like you said, I'm here outside of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where we're waiting the arrival of Tony Stark; we're hoping he'll give us the reaction - his reaction - to the latest attack - "_

The newscaster turned and Eve startled when Tony appeared on the television.

"Tony!" she called, not realizing for a moment that he couldn't hear her. It was hard to discern what anyone on the television was saying now. The moment that Tony appeared, the entire crowd raised in volume. People were shouting questions at Tony as he walked towards his car. He didn't say a single word to answer any of them.

 _"When is somebody going to kill this guy?"_

That made Tony pause. A hush came over the crowd that was hounding him. He turned and looked directly into the device that was held in the heckler's hand. Eve did not recognize the device, although she noted to herself that it bore a resemblance to the device that Tony had used to communicate with Happy the day prior.

 _"Just sayin',"_ the man continued as Tony turned. Eve blinked up at the television, quietly startled by the severe look on Tony's face.

 _"Is that what you want?"_ Tony asked. _"Here's a little holiday greeting I've been wanting to send to the Mandarin."_

The Mandarin - Eve's heart jumped. That was the person they had been talking about on the news. The one who had claimed to be behind the explosion that had killed those people. She drew in a shaky breath and winded her arms around her body, forgetting about the half-eaten yogurt cups on the counter.

 _"I just didn't know how to phrase it until now,"_ he continued. _"My name is Tony Stark and I'm not afraid of you. I know you're a coward, so I've decided that you just died, pal."_ He reached up and removed his sunglasses, staring straight into the man's camera phone. _"I'm gonna come get the body. There's no politics here, it's just good old fashioned revenge. There's no Pentagon, it's just_ you _and_ me _. And on the off chance you're a man, here's my home address: 10880 Malibu Point, 90265. I'll leave the door unlocked. That's what you wanted, right?"_

He took the device from the man's hand and threw it; the camera followed the device as it hit the wall and clattered to the ground. When the camera returned to Tony, he was climbing into his car. The shouting and chattering began again just before he drove away. As his car skidded off, the newscaster looked back into the camera.

 _"There we have it,"_ she said. _"An open threat from Tony Stark to the Mandarin. We'll be following this story closely to see what will become of it. Reporting to you from Cedars-Sinai, I'm Susie Hamilton. Jack?"_

 _"Thank you, Susie..."_

Eve tuned out the noise from the television. Tony had just given their location to the Mandarin! She didn't know who the Mandarin was, but if Tony was threatening to kill him, then he can't have been good. Could he? She had only known Tony for a day or two. She trusted him, he said that he was going to help her. So he must be good. If the Mandarin was hurting people, then Tony was doing the right thing by threatening him. Right?

Sliding off of the barstool, Eve hurried down to the garage. That was where she felt safest in the house. It was where Tony spent most of his time, and it was where he kept his iron suits. She hoped that, when she saw Tony zoom off from the hospital, he would be coming home. She didn't know what to make of the events that had unfolded on the television.

"JARVIS," she asked.

"Yes, Miss Eve?"

"Why was Tony at the medical center?"

"His bodyguard and friend, Happy Hogan, was injured in a Mandarin attack."

Eve gasped. "How terrible!"

"Indeed."

"Will Tony be home soon?"

"Mr. Stark will return in approximately 45 minutes."

Eve frowned. That wasn't very soon. She let out a shaky breath, sitting herself down on a swivel chair by one of the desks. She had wanted to talk to Tony about what she read in her file the night before, to ask him what SHIELD was and if they could help her find out more about what had happened to her. But now, she supposed, he would be busy. She wasn't sure with what, but she assumed that, after making a threat to someone dangerous, he would have little time to answer her menial questions. They weren't menial questions to her, though. They were the most important questions in the world.

She lost herself in thought for a long while, placing her elbows on the desk and chewing on her thumbnail. Eventually, she heard footsteps descend the stairs, and looked up to see Tony entering the garage. She shot up out of her seat.

"Tony!" she cried. "I saw you on the television!"

"Did you? JARVIS, give me everything you can find on the Mandarin."

Tony took a seat at his desk, and Eve followed, standing several paces behind him. The glass computer screens lit up, information flitting onto the screens. Eve watched the technology with interest, intrigued at Tony's ability to interact with the holographic information that was being presented by the screens.

"I've compiled a Mandarin database for you, Sir," said JARVIS, "drawing from SHIELD, FBI, and CIA intercepts."

Eve watched with fascination as Tony used his hands to move the holograms from his computer screens to the workspace behind him.

"Initiating virtual crime scene reconstruction," JARVIS announced as the hologram expanded. Tony stood, walking through the hologram. Eve followed with small steps, captivated.

"Okay, what do we got here?" Tony murmured, looking through the virtual information displays laid out before him. "His name is an ancient Chinese war mantle, meaning 'adviser to the King'. South American insurgency tactics, talks like a Baptist preacher. There's lots of pageantry going on here...lots of theater." He held out a hand and closed it to form a fist. "Close." The virtual information disappeared.

"The heat from the blast was in excess of 3000 degrees Celsius. Any subjects within 12.5 yards were vaporized instantly," JARVIS informed.

"No bomb parts found in a three mile radius of the Chinese Theater," Tony continued.

"No, sir," the AI confirmed. Eve watched on as Tony conducted his work, using the holographic interface to reexamine the scene of the crime and figure out what had caused the explosion. Her mind was whirling, presenting and evaluating solutions for what the cause could have been. It was not a bomb, so what else could it be? Could something have exploded that was not a bomb? Her mind ran through the different possibilities, but none of them quite added up. She stepped to the side when the holographic interface changed to display a map. Tony had climbed to the top of one of his toolboxes to gain a vantage point over the interface.

Eve looked down at her hands. She didn't know how hot her... _energy projectiles_ were. Perhaps, once Tony was no longer busy, she would ask him to run a test. They didn't feel hot, not to her, but when she had inspected the tool box that she had blasted, she noticed that the metal around the hole where her blast had impacted had melted. That indicated that her energy blasts were heated. She surmised the toolbox had been made of steel, based on the distinct lack of iron that she picked up from her brief examination. Somehow, somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that steel melted at 1510 degrees Celsius. She could not cause a heat blast over 3000 degrees. She could manage, at most, half of that. _Unless..._ She examined both hands. Could she? Perhaps this was not the best time to try. But if she could form a superheated projectile, could someone else? Could someone form one hotter than she could? And if they could, how? She didn't understand how she could do it. Based on Tony and Pepper's reactions, it certainly didn't seem to be a common ability. She wasn't sure if - or how - anyone else would be able to possess an ability similar to hers.

So perhaps it was a projectile that had been fired from a machine. Tony had his repulsors - could somebody have something similar? But she was unsure if his repulsors were heated. They were powered, certainly, but the wood targets that he had used had only shattered apart. She hadn't noticed any significant singing, but perhaps she hadn't looked hard enough...

She was startled out of her thoughts by a chime. Looking up, she noticed that the holographic interface was gone. Tony, still sitting up on his toolbox, was looking up at a holographic alert.

"What was that?" she asked. Tony frowned.

"The doorbell."

* * *

 **A/N:** Thanks so much for reading! I'm thrilled!


	8. Chapter 7: Air

7

"Are we still at 'ding-dong'? We're supposed to be on total security lock down. Come on, I threatened a terrorist. Who is that?"

Tony swiveled around on the top of the toolbox, hopping down.

"There's only so much I can do, sir, when you give the world's press your home address."

He hurried around the garage, powering up his Mark XLII and stepping into it.

"Tony?" Eve asked worriedly. "Do terrorists ring the...doorbell?"

"Not usually," Tony answered, walking up the stairs. She followed behind cautiously, but he stopped her when they reached the top of the stairs. "You should probably wait here, Eve. At least until I can see who's there. But if I scream, or I make any sounds that might indicate that I'm dying, I'd appreciate your little...blowing-up thing."

Eve blinked, understanding that Tony wanted her to stay behind for her protection. The extra chatter was, for the most part, lost on her. She heard footsteps in the foyer, and Tony approached them.

"Right there's fine," he said, walking out of her line of sight. She didn't like knowing that Tony could potentially be in danger. She didn't like him being in danger with only his iron suit to protect him. It was quiet for a moment. "You're not the Mandarin, are you? _Are_ you?"

"You don't remember," the visitor sighed. Eve identified the voice as sounding highly feminine, though she recognized that voice pitch was not a clear indicator of gender. She did recognize, however, that the tone of voice - coupled with the dry chuckle - did not indicate threat of violence. "Why am I not surprised?"

"Don't take it personally, I don't remember what I had for breakfast."

"Gluten-free waffles, sir," JARVIS answered.

"That's right."

Eve shuffled forward, peeking around the corner into the foyer. Tony was close by, still at the edge of the stairs that led down into the sitting room. The visitor was, indeed, a woman, standing on the other side of the foyer by the doors. She was not dressed for combat, instead wearing a short dress with a jacket. Still, Eve did not yet feel comfortable in concluding that this person would not be a threat to Tony.

"Okay, look, I need to be alone with you. Someplace not here, it's urgent."

"You can come out, Eve. It's fine." Tony turned and began to walk back into the sitting room. Eve remained at the top of the stairs, watching as the woman followed Tony further into the house. The woman glanced uncomfortably at Eve, apparently aware that the woman was appraising her from her spot by the stairs. "Normally, I'd go for that sort of thing, but now I'm in a committed relationship."

Eve jumped when a bag fell from the balcony. She had been unaware that Pepper had returned home. She stepped forward just as another bag landed beside the first.

"It's...with her."

"Tony?" Pepper's voice echoed from above. Listening hard, Eve could hear Pepper's footsteps on the balcony above, walking towards the stairs. The mechanical sound of Tony's suit beginning to peel itself off of his body was distracting, but with focus, she could hear Pepper begin to descend the stairs. "Is somebody there?"

"Yeah, it's Maya Hansen," Tony replied. "Old botanist pal that I used to know, barely."

As Pepper reached the bottom of the stairs, encountering the massive stuffed bunny that Tony had bought her, Tony pulled Maya aside. Eve stepped forward, tuning in on the hushed voice Tony was using to keep Pepper from hearing him.

"Please don't tell me that there is a twelve year-old kid waiting in the car that I've never met."

"He's thirteen," Maya said dryly. Tony made a startled noise. "And no, I need your help."

"What...what for? Why now?

"Because I read the papers," she answered. "And, frankly, I don't think you'll last the week."

Eve tilted her head as she watched the interaction continue. She was unsure what to make of Maya Hansen. Having appeared in a time when the threat level was high, her gut instinct was not to trust her, despite the fact that Tony seemed to. As Pepper joined the interaction - and as the interaction became an argument - it became apparent that both women wanted Tony to leave in order to increase his chances of safety.

When the argument turned to the massive bunny standing by the stairs, Tony and Pepper began to bicker. Maya removed herself from the argument, turning her attention to the television on the wall. Eve noticed this, and tilted her head. The television was displaying several flying vehicles hovering near a cliffside mansion. After a moment, Eve realized with a gasp that it was their location that was being displayed on the television.

"Guys, can we - um..." Maya turned, pointing to the television. Eve shot forward, staring out the window.

"What?" Tony asked, turning his head toward Maya.

"Do we need to worry about that?"

" _Tony!_ "

The three other occupants of the room turned as Eve cried out, facing the window just in time to see a missile pierce the glass. It collided with the fireplace and exploded in a millisecond, sending all four of them flying back through the air. Eve, in the midst of falling, thrust her arms out - but before she could do anything, her back collided with the wall and she fell limply to the ground.

"Tony!" she called again, attempting to stand on shaky legs. "Pepper!"

The roof began to crumble, but just before Eve could lurch forward and do something, Pepper, clad in the Iron Man armor, shielded Tony from the falling debris. They stood, about to make their way towards Maya, unconscious on the floor, but they'd hardly taken two steps before another missile burst through the shattered glass, lodging itself in the wall and exploding. Eve coughed, heart racing. She was beginning to panic. _Tony. I need to protect Tony._

"Move!" he called to them. Eve felt cold metal fingers close around her arm and flinched. "I'm right behind!"

She spotted a helicopter lower itself closer to the house through the broken window. Thrusting out an arm, she felt the release of energy as the shining blue bolt hurdled through the air towards the helicopter. It collided with the side of the helicopter with an ear-splitting twang. The bolt melted through the metal and the rotors stalled, and Eve felt a deep satisfaction in her gut. Pepper pulled her further towards the door, but Eve felt the floor beneath her give. She hardly made it onto stable ground before it gave way into a gaping hole.

"Get her!" he instructed, motioning to Maya. "I'm gonna find a way around." The two women hesitated, reluctant to leave him behind. "Stop stopping! Get her, get outside! _Go!_ "

The mask slid down over Pepper's face with a clank. Pepper pulled Eve along behind her as she hurried towards Maya, lying prone on the ground. The woman began to stir as Pepper reached her, pulling her arm around her shoulders and lifting her to her feet. Eve looked over her shoulder, searching for Tony among the debris.

"Eve, come on!" Pepper called. Slowly, reluctantly, Eve followed behind as they made their way through the ruined foyer. And then the repulsor went off.

The position of Pepper's hand meant that the repulsor sent both her and Maya crashing through the glass doors, tumbling down on the hard ground outside. Eve, behind them, was hit full in the chest. She flew backwards, coming down hard onto the ground and rolling several feet, stopping mere inches away from the hole in the floor. She groaned with pain, rolling herself onto her back. She was hardly aware of JARVIS's voice echoing over the sound of debris crashing to the ground.

"Sir, Miss Potts is clear of the structure."

She lifted her head weakly, blinking her eyes blearily to try and regain her bearings. There was a whirring overhead, and when she looked up, she saw the various pieces of the Iron Man armor flying through the air, deeper into the debris. She gasped, lifting herself off of the floor.

" _Tony!_ "

Standing, she ran, jumping the ever-growing distance between the floors. She skidded as she landed, sliding down the slanted floor towards Tony.

"Eve, what the hell are you doing here?"

The armor crashed onto him, molding itself to his body. She looked like hell, clothes torn, covered in scratches and blood. Her eyes were silver-blue and glowing again, the same electric blue that emitted from her hands.

"Look out!" He turned just as bullets began twanging against the metal and concrete of what was left of his house, but after a moment, it stopped. Eve had thrust out her hands, and hardly three feet in front of her, the bullets stopped as though encountering an invisible shield, clattering uselessly to the ground.

Another explosion below them had the floor tilting towards the ocean. Eve lost her balance, the force field disappearing as her hands dropped to help her keep her balance.

"JARVIS," she heard Tony call, "where's my flight power?"

She didn't hear JARVIS's response. Latching onto the rim of the floor beside Tony, she turned towards the helicopters, extending her hand again to protect herself and Tony from the rain of bullets. Realizing that the grand piano was sliding towards him, Tony released his hold on the ground.

"No!" She released her told on the rim as well, then stopped herself sliding when Tony blasted the piano with his repulsors, sending it flying towards the helicopters. _Those flying machines are the enemy_ , she thought. _I need to be offensive._

She thrust her hands out towards the helicopter on the right, sending a bolt of energy from each hand hurtling towards the helicopter. The first hit the rotors, but the second collided with the tail of the helicopter, blasting it off and sending both it and the rest of the chopper falling towards the water.

Realizing that she had lost track of Tony, she focused hard on her hearing, attempting to find him. She heard heavy metal footsteps running away from her on her left side. She hurried after him, desperate to keep him safe under the rain of fire. When she reached him, the helicopter outside was losing height rapidly, plunging through the air straight towards them.

"Uh oh..."

" _Tony!_ "

She thrust her hands out again, hoping beyond hope that she would be strong enough to contain it. As Tony turned and began to run, the helicopter crashed through the house and collided with the ground - and her force field. She felt the force of the blast against the shield. It reverberated through her arms and into her chest. And it burned. With a cry of pain, she released the shield, allowing the power of the blast to pass. She and Tony flew through the air, and Eve landed hard on the ground. Trying to clear her head and ignore the pain radiating from her chest, she sat up. Each breath felt like her ribs were going to snap in half. But Tony had saved her. She would save him if it was the last thing she did.

Crawling towards the crumbled floor, she peered down into what used to be the garage. She saw Tony there, but flinched away from the searing heat of fire as more explosions began to erupt. The house began to fall away from the cliff, taking Tony and Eve with it. Eve closed her eyes before hit the water, bracing herself for impact.

She never felt it when it came.

It was...strange. Like her consciousness had been put in a box, and some hidden part of her brain had taken over. She felt like she was watching her body move as someone else controlled her limbs. She opened her eyes, unbothered by the sting of salt water against them. _Where is Tony?_ She looked around, spotting a light shining through the dirt and debris that swirled through the water. He was there. She swam to him, maneuvering herself swiftly through the water, avoiding the wreckage and rubble that sank through the water. He was sinking rapidly, but she couldn't bring herself to panic. Her brain wouldn't let her. She was too focused on forcing her muscles to work harder, to swim faster so she could reach him.

A black mass of debris crashed down to the ocean floor on top of him. Eve paused in shock. _I have one minute of air left before I will begin to drown_. She needed to work fast. Swimming towards the rubble, she began pulling away rocks and clumps of concrete and steel as soon as she reached it. A hand burst through the wreckage, a shining light in the center of the metal palm. Bracing her feet on the debris, Eve grabbed the hand tightly and pulled.

As soon as Tony was free of the wreckage, the suit began to act of its own accord. He had hardly processed the fact that it was _Eve_ who had pulled him out before the flight power was restored and he was hurtling through the water.

Eve watched with bleary eyes as the iron suit containing Tony soared through the water away from her. He would be safe now. Her objective was complete. She blinked, turning to look up towards the surface, where she could see the the last hints of daylight above. Her chest was beginning to burn, lungs aching to take in a breath, but her brain resisted the inhalation reflex. She pushed off from the ground, extending her arms toward the light.

 _Air. I need air._

* * *

 **A/N:** Things are really starting to kick off now! I really want to give a huge thanks to the people who have read, faved, reviewed, and followed. It really means so, so much to me!


	9. Chapter 8: Eyepatch

8

 _"You've gotta stay safe. Keep Eve safe. I don't understand her yet. I don't understand anything. I just stole a poncho from a wooden Indian."_

Pepper removed the helmet from over her head, tears of relief trailing down her cheeks. She couldn't believe it - Tony had lived. Somehow, by some miracle, he had found a way to make it out alive. Pressing a kiss to the forehead of the helmet, she threw it into the ocean below.

Tony had lived, but she wasn't sure if Eve had. She had never made it out of the house before it slid into the ocean. Knowing that Tony had lived made Pepper feel like a massive, suffocating weight had been lifted from her chest. But Eve's disappearance had left a sour feeling in her mouth, a wrenching feeling in her gut. Pepper couldn't say that she had grown particularly close with Eve, but she did hold a fondness for the strange young woman. After reading through her file, she couldn't help but feel pity and sympathy; for the pain she had endured as a test subject, but especially for the fact that there was so little known about her. Eve was lost, without a past. And now she was just _lost_ , either buried beneath the rubble or lost to the sea.

"Pepper?" Letting out a shaking breath, she turned. Maya was standing behind her, among the ruins of her home. "Are you alright?"

No.

"Yes," Pepper replied. "As alright as I'll ever be. Come on, my car's just over there."

"Are you sure you don't want the paramedics to check you out?"

"Really," she said, shaking her head. "I'm fine. Let me take you home."

She stumbled over the cracked ground, guiding Maya away from the wreckage and towards her car, scratched and dented, but still parked in the driveway. They drove away from the scene, leaving behind the firetrucks and parked news vans, and the trembling from of Eve as she pulled herself up over the side of the cliff, collapsing prone onto the ground.

* * *

The warmth of the sunlight on her cheeks and the incessant sound of the waves crashing against the cliff side was what eventually woke her. She blinked, squinting her eyes in the bright light of the sun. Her limbs ached, though the pain that coursed through her body had lessened significantly from the day before in the midst of the attack. She groaned with the effort it took her to sit up, reaching up to run a hand over her eyes.

Standing, Eve surveyed her surroundings. There was very little of the house left. The mansion that used to reside on the cliff and been destroyed and had slid into the ocean below. She moved through the mounds of wreckage and rubble, the sad remains of the house, making her way towards where she remembered the entrance to be. It didn't take her very long to realize that she was alone. She didn't know where Tony or Pepper or Maya were, or if they were okay. The last thing she remembered was seeing Tony inside of the Iron Man suit, drifting away from her through the water.

"You're Eve, aren't you?"

She jumped, standing quickly and turning around to face the unexpected voice. A man that she didn't recognize was standing in the driveway. He was tall and dark-skinned, dressed all in black with an eyepatch and a bald head. She noticed, behind him, a large black vehicle, and wondered to herself how she hadn't noticed it before.

"Who are you?" she asked. The man put his hands in his pockets.

"SHIELD never forgot about you, you know. But Howard Stark never told us how to find you. We started to run out of places to look."

"W-who?" she asked, mind whirring. "Wait, SHIELD? That was...SHIELD saved me."

"That's right," the man nodded. "But you're going to be the one doing the saving, now. I need you to help save Tony Stark."

Eve frowned, shaking her head. "I already saved Tony. Yesterday. Didn't I?"

"Yes," the man confirmed, nodding. "But, what you'll learn about Tony, is that he gets himself into trouble all the time. I mean it, that dude _always_ needs saving. And he needs your help right now."

"How...how can I help him?"

The man smiled. "You can come with me."

He motioned towards the black vehicle behind him. She walked slowly, hesitantly, towards the vehicle. He opened one of the back doors for her, and she cautiously slid inside. Without Tony there to inform her decisions, she wasn't sure whether or not he was truly trustworthy. She had heard him say before that he didn't trust SHIELD, but...the man had said that she could help Tony. And Tony had saved her. He'd taken her out of the ice chamber and he promised he would help her. She had to help him, if it was the last thing she did.

* * *

Eve had never been on a plane before, at least not that she remembered, but she did not find it to be a particularly enjoyable experience. She did not understand the physics of such a large vehicle having the ability to fly through the air. Perhaps once she did, she thought, she would enjoy the experience more. Although she thought the phenomenon to be quite fascinating, she was too on edge to be comfortable while the plane was in air.

About halfway through the flight, the man, who had still not introduced himself, presented her with a folded up outfit. Suddenly, she became quite aware that she was still barefoot, wearing the t-shirt and cotton shorts that Pepper had given her. He handed her the one-piece outfit and a pair of flat black boots, directing her to a small bathroom where she could change.

She was unfamiliar with the material of the outfit, and it took her a moment to figure out how to put it on. Once she had zipped it up, she examined herself in the small mirror in the bathroom. She ran a gentle finger over the lacerations on her cheek and forehead, frowning. They were healing well, but she frowned mostly because they were present at all. Still, she remarked to herself, her injuries after an ordeal as severe as the one she had endured the day before were very mild.

"There, that's better," the man said as she exited. "A little more battle-ready than pajamas. That'll keep you much safer."

"Am...am I going into battle?" she frowned. The man shrugged.

"Most likely."

"Oh. Battle with who?"

"Battle with people who want to do bad things. Mean people who want to hurt nice people. Mean people who want to hurt Tony Stark."

Her eyes widened, and then narrowed. "I would very much like to engage in battle with people who want to hurt Tony."

"Good," he said, nodding. "We'll touch down in about an hour. In the meantime..." He slid her a tablet across the table he was sitting at, beckoning her to sit across from him. "This is all we know about Extremis. It might be good for you to read."

Sitting, she took the tablet, examining the technology for a moment before turning her attention to the information that the tablet contained. Reading through it, her eyebrows knitted together as her confusion grew. What relevance did any of this have to helping Tony? He didn't have this, did he? She looked up with a frown.

"What does this have to do with helping Tony?" she asked.

"The people who want to hurt him," he started, pointing at the tablet, "have _this_. I don't know how they're going to use it, or how many people with it they have."

Eve understood that he was indicating the information on the tablet and not the tablet himself. She brought her hand up to her mouth, chewing on her thumb nail. Somewhere, in the back of her mind at the shadowy edge of her memory, this all felt familiar. She got the distinct impression that she had endured training for situations such as these, but she could not recall any direct memory pertaining to any sort of relevant situation. Huffing her herself, she put down the tablet.

"I am going to fight them."

The man smiled. "Good."

* * *

It was nighttime when Eve embarked on her second car ride that day. She was in a place called Florida, which she had learned was another location in the country in which she was currently residing. The man was outlining the specifics of what he called her 'mission' again, reminding her not to interfere with the rescue of the President. Eve did not know who the President was, but the man was talking too quickly for her to interject and pose the question.

They rolled to a stop near the waterfront, surrounded by large metal boxes of which Eve didn't know the purpose. She exited the car when the man did, adjusting the black one-piece suit he had given her.

"Your job is to keep Tony Stark alive, no matter the cost," he said. She turned briefly to glance at him.

"Where is Tony?"

"He should be arriving soon, probably with his friend Colonel Rhodes. I need to be gone before then, so you're going to wait here."

"Why do you need to be gone?" she asked, turning fully.

"It's complicated. But I'll be back."

With that, he climbed back into the black vehicle and drove away. She watched the red lights on the back of the car as it left, ruminating over the mysteriousness of the man, before quiet voices caught her attention. Listening hard, she managed to determine the direction from which the voices were coming. The closer she got to the voices, the more she realized that one of them sounded incredibly familiar. _Tony_. Her heart jumped. He was nearby! And he was safe - or, at least, alive. Eve was in charge of safe.

She spotted Tony and another man walking down the wharf and hurried towards them.

"Tony!" she called. Both of the men turned, though only one of them - the one Eve didn't recognize, who she suspected to be Colonel Rhodes - raised his gun.

"Eve?" he gaped.

"Yes, it is me!" Her delighted greeting was met with a harsh hush. She remembered that the man had said something about stealth and inwardly chided herself for her carelessness. Stealth required silence; she had learned that.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Tony asked.

"Tony, do you know this woman?"

"She's - you know what, it's a long story, we don't have time for it."

"The eyepatch man from SHIELD brought me here," she explained. The eyepatch man from SHIELD? Tony narrowed his eyes.

"Fury."

Eve tilted her head. "Is that the emotion you're currently experiencing?"

"It's the guy's name, don't worry about it right now."

"He said I had to help you."

"You know what, I'll take all the help I can get. Come on." He beckoned her to follow behind him, placing a hand on his friend's arm. "Rhodey, this is Eve. Eve, Rhodey."

"Hello," Eve beamed, introducing herself quietly. Rhodey frowned.

"Yeah...hi," he replied, hurrying to get ahead of Tony. He was the one who actually knew what he was doing, after all.

He lead them further down the wharf towards a ship at the far end. Halfway down the wharf, they climbed down onto a small wooden docking platform that placed them below the view of the wharf. Eve recognized that this would allow them to have a better chance at sneaking up on their target. When they reached the end of the docking platform, they began to climb up a ladder, pausing for a moment when Rhodey lowered himself to stay undetected.

Climbing back onto the wharf, they hurried across it quickly, taking cover behind a large machine.

"You're not going to freak out on me, right?" Rhodey asked, glancing at Tony as they edged toward the other side of the machine.

"I hope not," Tony replied. Eve frowned, but understood that this was not an appropriate time for her to be asking for clarification. She decided to store away the question to ask later. When Rhodey was sure that the coast was clear, they hurried, half-hunched, across the wharf over to the edge of the ship. They jumped on, keeping low and taking cover behind various objects to stay out of sight of the various workers bustling around the deck.

"He's strung up over the oil tank. They're gonna light him up, man," Rhodey said.

"Viking funeral. Public execution," Tony said stiffly.

"Yeah, death by oil."

"Wait, the President?" Eve asked. Tony nodded, and she huffed quietly. "Who is the president? Eyepatch man told me not to help save him."

"How do you not know who the President is?" Rhodey asked, incredulous.

"She's out of touch, calm down about it," Tony said, beckoning them onward. "Come on, let's go."


	10. Chapter 9: Kill

9

 _"Broadcast will commence shortly. Please take final positions."_

Eve didn't know what that meant, but she figured that hurrying up several flights of stairs probably wasn't a good time to ask, either. Rhodey lead them across the platform, holding his weapon at the ready.

"Is your gun up?" he asked Tony.

"Yep." Tony raised his gun. "What do I do?"

"Stay on my six, cover high, and don't shoot me in the back."

"Six, high, back. Alright."

"What about me?" Eve asked. Rhodey looked back at Tony.

"Blast anyone who isn't us or Pepper," Tony replied. As if on cue, they were suddenly assaulted by gunfire coming from above. Tony immediately began shooting, paying little regard to aiming his shots. Blinded for a moment by the floodlight beaming down at them, Eve moved away, before thrusting her hand out in the direction of the light. The electric blue energy bolt crashed into the light, destroying it. Tony herded her under cover with Rhodey.

"What the hell was that?" Rhodey asked, looking down at Eve's hands glowing blue.

"This thing she does sometimes that I'm kind of starting to love," Tony replied quickly. His reply made Eve smile. He raised his gun, popping out the ammunition magazine. "I'm out. Give me - give me - have you got an extra magazine?"

"They're not universal, Tony," Rhodey answered. Eve frowned as the two men began to bicker.

"I know what I'm doing, I make this stuff."

"Okay."

"Give me another one."

"I don't have one that fits that gun."

"You've got five of 'em!" Tony, dropping the conversation, turned. "Alright here's what I'm going to do, I'm gonna spot. Ready?"

He rose quickly, peeking his head over their cover, before sitting back down.

"What'd you see?" Rhodey asked.

"Too fast, nothing. Here we go." He rose again, this time taking a moment to observe their surroundings before he sat back down. "Three guys, one girl, all armed."

Tony and Rhodey rose, Eve following their lead, to peek over their cover. They were gradually becoming surrounded. Eve understood, now, why the eyepatch man had warned her about Extremis; otherwise, she wouldn't have understood why their enemies were all emitting a strange orange glow. Her brain recognized it as the mark of a target. She narrowed her eyes.

"I'd kill for some armor right now," Rhodey said, arms crossed over his chest.

"You're right," Tony agreed. "We need backup."

"Yeah, a bunch."

"You know what?" Tony said, drawing both of their attention. Instead of continuing, he nodded his head, keeping his eyes on something in the sky. Eve and Rhodey both turned to look at what he had motioned toward. In the sky, coming toward them, was a light. And then...another. And another.

"Is...is that...?"

"Yep."

"Are those - ?"

"Yeah."

Eve, who didn't catch on to Rhodey and Tony's subtlety, tilted her head. After a moment, something in her brain seemed to click. She gasped, delighted.

"Tony!" she said excitedly, turning to him. "Are those your Iron Man suits?"

Tony let out a fond sigh. "So intelligent, and yet..."

The Iron Man suits stopped in formation all around their position. Eve looked up at them all with fascination.

"Merry Christmas, Rhodey. JARVIS," he continued, placing a finger on the communicator in his ear. "Target Extremis heat signatures. Disable with _extreme_ prejudice."

"Yes, sir," the suits echoed.

"What are you waiting for?" Tony asked, stepping forward on the platform. "It's Christmas. Take 'em to church."

Eve was darkly delighted to watch the suits begin their attack on the Extremis soldiers. The three of them ducked when an attacked suit flew just overhead, crashing to the ground in the blaze of flames. They stayed low, trying to keep their balance on the high-up platform which began to sway when some of the supports were blown out.

"JARVIS, get Igor to steady this thing," Tony commanded. Eve furrowed her brow.

"Who?"

"So this is how you've been managing your downtime," Rhodey said, a hint of amusement in his voice.

"Everybody needs a hobby," Tony replied with a shrug. They turned their attention back to the fights ensuing around the ship. Eve was quietly amused when she realized that Tony had named each of the suits he had created. Her amusement ended when one of the suits, an Extremis soldier on its back, collided with several oil tanks. The explosion sent a rain of fire falling down around them. A suit came to Tony, landing and opening up for him to take his place inside of it.

"Tony!" she called, hoping to speak to him briefly before he flew off into battle. He turned to her. "Fighting, and - and killing these people...will it keep you safe?"

"It'll keep everyone safe, Evie."

She nodded, considering this. "Good."

"Oh yeah," said Rhodey, standing. "That's awesome. Give me a suit, okay?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. They're...they're only coded to me." Tony held out a hand to Eve for her to take. He pulled her closer and, suspecting he might take off flying, Eve held on tight.

"What's that mean?" Rhodey asked.

"I've got you covered. Hold on!" Eve braced herself as Tony shot into the air. He flew around, lowering himself near one of the lower platforms. "I'm gonna let you go, now. You good?"

"I am well prepared for a combat situation," she answered.

"You didn't take that literally," he remarked. Just before taking off into the air, he remarked, "They grow up so fast."

She turned to watch him zoom off, before turning her attention to the fray around her. An Extremis soldier had noticed her and was running towards her across the platform. Clenching and unclenching her hands, she threw her arm out, throwing a bolt of energy at the soldier. The blue bolt tore straight through their chest, and they collapsed, limp. Eve paused for a moment, staring down at the body. She regretted taking this life, but her brain wasn't the same right now. It felt like her consciousness was in a box again. Logically, she knew that this loss of life was sad, but her brain wasn't considering that right now. She had one goal in mind: keep Tony and Pepper and Rhodey safe. She stepped over the body.

She climbed up to another platform, where she had spotted another Extremis soldier. A bullet tore through her shoulder, but she paid it no mind. The gunshot did not hinder her as she walked towards the soldier. Her first energy bolt missed, whizzing past the soldier's head harmlessly. The second caught his arm. The soldier cried out in pain, but the arm began to grow back quickly. Eve thrust out her arm once more, hitting the soldier in the rebuilding arm, and then, while the soldier was hindered, she threw out a bolt that caught him in his neck.

Fighting felt...good. She had never felt more in her element. Even though her brain had cleared, no longer working like it normally did, it was the best feeling in the world. Like she was _made_ for this. Usually, she used her energy bolts, throwing them out to burn through whichever enemy was next in line. Sometimes she used her forcefield, to protect her from a spray of bullets while she focused on another soldier trying to fight her. Sometimes, just for the sheer enjoyment of it, she would punch and kick and throw them over the sides of the platforms to the deck of the ship hundreds of feet below.

She turned when she felt the heat of an explosion at her back. Squinting at the light of the blaze, she noticed Rhodey swing away from the fire with the President in his grasp. She turned away again.

"Your job is not to save the President," the man from SHIELD had told her. "Your job is to save Tony Stark."

Making her way across the platforms, she continued fighting, dispatching soldier after soldier. She had just tossed one over the edge of a platform when her ears zeroed in on a voice that her brain had recognized as significant.

" _NO!_ "

She turned, spotting the source of the voice across the ship on a platform about her level. Tony was half-hanging over the railing, but it was what he was reaching for that Eve was watching. She lurched forward against the railing, but there was nothing to be done. She was too far away. The flames seemed to rise up to engulf Pepper's body.

Eve saw red. A rage filled her like she had never experienced before. It coursed through her like fire, making her hands shake and her jaw clench. Her mind changed again. It didn't turn into her rational day-to-day mind, and it was no longer the brain that focused only on her prime objective. Now, her prime objective was gone. Now, she was angry. Her brain became clear of every thought until there was only one left.

 _Kill_.


	11. Chapter 10: Extremis

10

A fist swung around at her, and Eve caught it in her hand. She squeezed her hand around the fist, the blue light of her power engulfing it. The flesh and bone melted beneath her hand. She tilted her head as the soldier screamed. Suddenly, she stopped. She let go. The soldier bent over in agony, holding their arm.

"That will not kill you." She stepped forward and took their face in her hands. "But this will."

Smothered is a very kind and very abridged word to describe the action that ensued. When the screaming stopped, which was rather quickly, Eve stood to her full height again. She stepped over the body, walking down from the platform.

 _I will not fail the most important facet of my objective._

Two soldiers came at her from either side. She formed a force field around herself, and the two soldiers rebounded off of it. Letting the shield drop, she grabbed the soldier in front of her and in the blink of an eye had switched their places, shoving them forward so their back was against the other soldier's chest. She placed her palm in the center of the chest of the soldier who was closest to her. She tilted her head, considering whether or not she should say goodbye, as a taunt, before deciding that taunts did not matter. She released the bolt of energy from her hand, and it shot straight through the chests of both soldiers.

She turned and continued walking.

An explosion behind her caught her attention. With a quiet gasp, she saw Tony sliding down a metal beam. Just as the beam started to collapse, he threw himself into the air. A suit flew beneath him, opening up the back for him to land in. The suit was only half-formed, and it crashed to the ground shortly after propelling Tony away from the explosion. Eve broke into a run, hurrying towards where she had seen him land, when the platform began to give way beneath her feet.

She slid down the tilting platform, hands reaching for something sturdy to grab hold of. Latching onto a railing, she looked for an opportunity to jump down from the platform. The opportunity never came; the ground gave way beneath her, and she found herself falling through the air. She didn't even begin screaming when she crashed into the ground. The impact knocked the wind out of her, and her back was screaming with pain, but her brain determined that it was not broken.

For several moments, she struggled to find her breath, well-aware that lying prone on the ground made her vulnerable to the falling debris. Eve forced herself to sit up, then pushed herself up onto shaky legs. She saw Tony nearby, slowly rising, and her heart jumped. She hurried towards him.

"Tony!" she called. He turned to her.

"Eve," he said, voice a bit strained. Her hands were no longer glowing, but her eyes were still silver-blue and emitting a bright blue light that Tony was learning not to hate. She knelt next to him when she reached him. "You're a sight for sore eyes."

"Are you safe?" she asked, dimly aware of the sound of creaking metal behind her. Tony was more aware of the sound, and his attention left Eve. A form rose from the flames.

"Not anymore."

Turning around, Eve rose to her feet in shock. Killian was limping towards them, body charred. She threw out her hands, firing energy bolts at him, but the wounds healed almost instantaneously. Tony struggled to get to his feet, but couldn't. Shuffling backwards, he grabbed Eve's leg, tugging her back and further away from Killian.

"No more false faces," Killian said, voice gruff. "You said you wanted the Mandarin, you're looking right at him. It was always me, Tony, right from the start. I _am_ the Mandarin!"

The sound of a heavy metal pole hitting hard flesh was a sound that Eve had never heard before, and it was a sound that she would never forget. Killian went flying off to the side, and Eve stumbled back with shock upon seeing Pepper, skin and eyes glowing orange. She tripped over Tony's feet and landed flat on her butt with a hard thud.

"I got nothing," Tony said, staring up at Pepper in shock. The moment was interrupted by the sound of an incoming suit. With a terrifying chill creeping up her back, Tony's words from earlier that night appeared in Eve's head.

 _Target Extremis heat signatures. Disable with extreme prejudice._

She wasn't sure if she was more worried about the incoming suit, or the sight of Killian standing in the corner of her eye.

"JARVIS," said Tony quickly. "Subject at my 12 o'clock is not a target, disengage!"

The machine wasn't slowing. In his confusion, Tony reached for the communication link in his ear - only to find it missing. Panicked, Eve held out her hands and they begin to glow. But before she could fire an energy bolt, the suit had readied its repulsors and fired a shot.

Pepper dodged the shot easily. She turned, running straight at Tony.

"What?" he asked, worried, confused. "Oh, what, are you mad at me?"

Eve had just raised her hands again, prepared to form a force field around Tony if need be, when Pepper launched herself from Tony's knee into the air, attacking the suit in mid-flight. When they landed on the ground, Pepper tore her fist out of the suit's chest cavity. She shoved her hand into the gauntlet, ripping it away from the suit and smaking Killian as he made to attack her. He skidded along the ground. Pepper, spotting a small missile rolling on the ground, kicked it towards Killian. Just as the missile was about to reach him, she fired a repulsor blast. The blast and the missile collided with Killian at the same time, exploding.

There was no body in the aftermath of the explosion this time.

"Honey," Tony called, catching Pepper's attention. She turned, arm still outstretched. Tony lifted himself into a squat, while Eve rose to her knees. Her eyes had since faded back to their natural brown color and were no longer glowing. After seeing Pepper destroy Killian, she no longer believed that Tony was in danger. She had kept him safe. Her objective was complete.

"Oh my God," Pepper panted, seeming surprised at herself. "That was really violent."

"You just scared the devil out of me. I thought you were..."

"I was dead? Why, because I fell two hundred feet?" She took a moment to catch her breath. "Who's the hot mess now?"

"Still debatable," Tony replied. He reached over to replace the communication link in his ear. "Probably tipping your way a little bit. Why don't you dress this way at home? Hm? Sports bra, the whole deal..."

"You know, I think I understand why you don't want to give up the suits," Pepper said, looking down at herself. "What I am gonna complain about now?"

"Well, it's me," Tony said. Eve stood when he did. "I'll think of something. Come here, babe."

Eve took a step forward when Tony approached Pepper, worried for a moment that he was in harm's way again. Pepper was reluctant to let him touch her, worried that her skin was still hot from the Extremis virus. But the orange glow had left her skin and her eyes, and when Tony touched her, she relaxed.

"Am I gonna be okay?" she gasped, distressed.

"No," Tony replied shortly. "You're in a relationship with me, everything will never be okay. But I think I can figure this out, yeah. I almost had this twenty years ago when I was drunk. I think I can get you better. That's what I do, I fix stuff."

"And...all your distractions?" she asked.

"Uh... I think I'm going to shave them down a little. JARVIS? Hey?" He tapped the comm link in his ear to make sure it was working. Eve couldn't hear JARVIS's side of the conversation. "You know what to do. Screw it, it's Christmas. Yes, yes."

Tony took Pepper into his arms, holding her close. Eve looked up when she heard one of the suits flying overhead. Suddenly, it exploded in mid-air. She gasped. And then everywhere, all around them, all of the suits flew into the air and self-destructed. Her ears caught a noise, even beneath the sound of the suits exploding, that gave her pause. She tilted her head, zeroing in on it. Turning, she saw the man in the eyepatch again, standing on the wharf with his large black vehicle behind him. He didn't say anything, didn't make any move at all. He just stared.

"Tony!" Eve called, turning her head slightly but not tearing her eyes from the man across the water. She heard Tony's footsteps approach her from behind, and he came up beside her. He didn't say a single word, only put his arm around Eve's shoulders and shook his head.

The man from SHIELD took a deep, reluctant breath. He nodded, turning around and climbing back into his car. Tony squeezed Eve's shoulders before letting her go.

"Come on, Evie girl," he said. "You're coming home with us."


	12. Chapter 11: Home

11

Looking back on it, Eve was never able to place exactly when she had fallen asleep that night. All she remembered after that was waking up on another plane and groaning.

"What's the matter?" Tony asked quietly, careful not to wake Pepper, asleep with her head on his chest. The two of them were lying on a sofa against one wall of the plane, Eve lying on a couch across from them with a warm blanket across her legs.

"I do not like planes," she replied, flopping down onto her back. "I want to understand this technology, but I do not. That, and my entire body hurts."

Tony chuckled softly. "Yeah, mine too. Hey...when we get home, I'm giving you a lab. And then you can understand all the technology you want. I'll even show you how to build some of it."

"Really?" Eve asked, sitting up. Delight lit up her eyes. Tony smiled. "You'll do that?"

"'Course I will. After all you've done for us, Eve, you can have anything you want."

She ended up falling asleep on the plane again, waking up blearily when Tony moved her to a bedroom and then going straight back to sleep once her head touched the plush pillows. When she woke, there was sunlight streaming through the windows. These windows were floor-to-ceiling just like the ones in Malibu, only these windows held a much different view. After Eve had stretched and taken a moment to wake up, she stood and approached the windows.

There were rows and rows of high-rise buildings spread before her, and she could see the ocean in the distance. She believed that they had not returned to Malibu. Exiting the room, she wandered down the hallway until she found a staircase, which led her down into a wide sitting room. She noticed a kitchenette on the far side of the room, but she seemed to be alone. Not yet hungry enough to eat breakfast, Eve found her way to the sofa and curled up on the plush cushions, tucking her legs beneath her.

Her eyes were still heavy, and her body still aching. The bullet hole in her shoulder had already mostly healed, even though the wound had only been inflicted the night before. Her back was especially sore, twinging when she moved a certain way. Getting comfortable on the couch, she had almost dozed off again when a noise behind her had her blinking awake. She turned, and noticed what looked to be a metal door behind her with a light above it. After a moment, the doors opened, and a tired looking Tony exited.

"Morning, sunshine," he greeted through a long yawn.

"Yes, it is morning, and the sun is outside."

Tony chuckled. "It's nice to see you, too."

"Um, Tony? Where are we?"

"New York City. I'm sure that doesn't mean much to you, yet. This place is going to be Avengers Tower, once all the renovations are complete. These are mine and Pepper's living quarters. We had a spare bedroom, for emergencies or whatever, but... It can be yours, if you want."

Eve blinked. She had not seen Tony hesitant and unsure in this way before. She understood that her ownership of the bedroom implied a permanent place for her here, among Tony and Pepper. She smiled.

"I would like that."

Tony smiled, too. "Come on. Let me show you around."

After giving her a brief tour of the living quarters, he took her into the elevator. While the elevator descended, he pointed out the different buttons on the computer panel on the wall.

"These symbols represent the other members of the team. If you press it, you'll go to their floor. You have to have permission, though. I'm still working out the kinks."

"Team?" Eve asked, curious.

"The Avengers," Tony explained, stepping out of the elevator. Eve followed. "It's this team I'm part of. Every so often, we get together and save the world. I'm giving the other members each their own floor in case they need to crash here, for whatever reason. Sorry you can't have your own floor. I didn't exactly plan on you."

"Are they here now?" she asked, looking around at the construction areas of the room they had entered.

"No," Tony replied. "They're all...away. Doing their own thing, I don't know. Anyways, this is the main area. There's a sitting room and a bar over there for hanging out. These areas up here will be laboratories, workspaces..."

Eve was quite fascinated, not only by the building, but by Tony's team. She got the distinct impression that there were more people like her; maybe not _exactly_ like her, but other people who were different and had special abilities. She hoped she would get the opportunity to meet them soon. Perhaps they would help her have a better understanding of herself.

Tony walked around, surveying the progress of the construction. It was coming along very well. All it needed was a few more months before it was complete and ready for usage. Eve wandered down the stairs to the sitting area. The massive windows provided a very beautiful view of the city around them. Something about the view made Eve's heart jump. There was so much... _potential_ that surrounded her. It made her excited. A smile came to her face as she looked down at the streets below. Something about her new surroundings instilled a feeling in her gut, like something incredible was spread out before her.

* * *

In the end, it took Tony about a month to work out the anti-Extremis serum. During the time that Pepper was taking it, she was weak and sickly. Eve spent a lot of time with her, fretting over her well-being or providing her company. She had gained an incredible fondness for Pepper, who was always unfailingly kind to her. It was a kindness that Eve treasured greatly. It reminded her of something from her past, just before she had gone into the ice chamber. Somebody had been kind to her, so incredibly kind for the first time, but Eve could remember little more than that.

Tony waited until Pepper began to recover from the antidote to make the biggest decision of his life. He had talked it through with her extensively, but had waited until she was feeling better to go through with it.

The night before the procedure, Tony sat Eve down on the sofa, taking a seat on the coffee table across from her. She was frowning, clearly very aware that he was about to tell her something important. The troubled look on his face was worrying her.

"Evie," he started, and then paused. He considered his words for a moment before speaking them aloud. "Tomorrow, I'm...I'm going to have a surgery done. A surgery is a procedure where -"

"I know what surgery is," Eve interrupted, blinking. "I've had many of those."

Something in Tony's expression broke. He hesitated, unsure which point to address first. "The point is...I'm getting the arc reactor taken out of my chest. I...I've finally made the decision to get the shrapnel removed. I don't need the arc reactor anymore."

Eve frowned. Without thinking, her hand rose and came to rest on his chest, her fingers resting above the faint blue glow of the circle beneath.

"But..." she started, eyebrows furrowed. "What will keep you safe? Your arc reactor will be gone, and you have no more Iron Man suits..."

Tony shrugged.

"You," he answered. "You'll keep me safe. Just like you have before."

She considered this for a long moment, staring at the arc reactor beneath her hand. Blinking, she nodded, lowering her hand at last.

"Can I be there?" she asked.

"'Course you can," he said. "Pepper and Rhodey will be there, too. I'll need you there. I'll need you _all_ there."

* * *

The next morning, she stood beside Pepper, staring through the glass at Tony laid out on the table. She hated the smell of the hospital. Something about the over-sanitary, rubbery smell made goosebumps trail up her arms. The sight of all the medical equipment made her hands tremble. The whole environment set her on edge. She hated being there, and she hated seeing Tony there.

 _They are fixing him_. She had to remind herself of this every so often to keep herself calm. As the surgery proceeded, Eve watched with her hands clasped together so tightly that her knuckles were white.

"He will be okay?" she asked, for what felt like the millionth time that morning.

"Of course," Pepper and Rhodey replied in tandem. Rhodey continued, "Trust me, Eve. If Tony can survive getting all that shrapnel put in there, he can survive getting it taken out."

He did, in the end. He returned to the Tower with the arc reactor in hand and bandages on his chest. In true Tony Stark fashion, he had tried to get up almost immediately and get back to work, although on what, neither Eve nor Pepper had any clue.

"You're _stifling_ me," he complained one day, lying on the couch with Eve standing over him, arms crossed. Pepper smiled at them from the kitchenette. "You might as well cover my face with a pillow and smother me!"

"Sometimes I wish I _could_ ," Eve huffed, rolling her eyes. Tony gasped.

"Was that a smart-ass comment?" he asked, grinning. "Pepper, quick! Grab the baby book! February 19, Eve made her first smart-ass comment."

"'Smart-ass' doesn't make any sense," she grumbled, sitting down on the couch opposite him. He paid no mind to her comment, continuing his jibes.

"I can't wait until she uses sarcasm. Oh - or figurative language!"

"If you keep making fun of her, she's going to stop letting you get up to go to the bathroom. You'll have to use a catheter," Pepper warned, bringing over a bowl of hot soup on a tray. Tony paled slightly.

"You'd never let her," he said. Pepper sat on the coffee table.

"I like that she's over-protective. It's cute. Plus, do you have any idea how much free time I have now? There's so many things I can do because I'm not worrying about you screwing something up every five minutes."

"Me? She's the one who blew up the garage!"

"You got the whole house blown up," Pepper pointed out.

"That wasn't my fault."

Eve stood as Tony and Pepper began to bicker back and forth, smiling to herself. Something about the sound of their argument was...comforting. She was comfortable here; Tony and Pepper wanted her to stay, she had a permanent place among them. She was happy here. She, for what she believed to be the first time ever, was home. She was home.

* * *

 **A/N:** Here is the final chapter of Eve of War! I'd like to thank everyone who read this, reviewed, favorited, or followed. It really means so much to me! I had such a wonderful time writing this and I'm so invested in it. For those who were wondering, Eve will be in my adaptation of Avengers: Age of Ultron! I'm still in the process of writing the following stories, but I'm sure they'll be out in due time. I hope you all enjoyed my story, and once again, thank you all for your support!

Oh, and by the way, keep an eye out for the epilogue!


	13. Epilogue

Epilogue

"Sir, I have identified the unknown component of Miss Eve's biology."

Tony looked up, startled. He had only just come back downstairs from taking Eve up to the guest room. Returning to his workshop, he had intended to begin automatic propulsion trials on the Mark XLII. Deciding to put that off for the moment, he moved over to his desk at the far side of the room.

"What have you got for me, JARVIS?"

"My results make very little sense, but it was the only match for the substance present in the blood sample."

Frowning, Tony looked up at his computer screens. It was unlike JARVIS to avoid a question. Tony had programmed the AI to be as clear and concise as possible; as such, JARVIS didn't often phrase something in such a way as to avoid telling him something. He pulled up the results on the glass computer screens and froze.

JARVIS was right. It didn't make any sense. And yet, somehow, it did. If SHIELD defectors had truly been experimenting on Eve, then it made a bit more sense, even though the science of it didn't - _couldn't_ \- add up. But then, how could SHIELD not know? With something like this, something this big, how could they have been unaware? Tony shook his head. He understood, now, why his father had taken Eve away from SHIELD, why Howard had decided that freezing her was the best course of action. None of this added up.

Because the unknown component of Eve's blood was the Tesseract.

* * *

 **A/N:** And there we have it! The story is officially done. By the way, in case it was unclear, this takes place during Chapter 5, after the panic over Eve's powers. Anyways, I hope everyone enjoyed! I know I certainly enjoyed writing it. Once again, I'd like to thank everyone who read this, everyone who favorited, followed, or reviewed. It really means so, so much to me!

To address a question from Hurricane.'97: I'm not sure if I'll do an Agents of SHIELD with Eve! I haven't watched the whole show, only bits and pieces, so I'm not sure where I'd be able to fit in a story line with Eve. If I get around to watching all - or most - of the show, I'll definitely consider finding somewhere for her to fit in, because you're right, that would be fun!

I haven't actively started writing the sequel, because things have been so hectic lately and I want to enjoy myself while I write. But hopefully it won't be too long, as I'm bursting with ideas of what to do! Until then, I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season.

Thank you all once again!


End file.
